


Frank and His (Im)Mortality

by TheVagabondBoy



Category: Daredevil (TV), Doctor Strange (2016), Fury (2014), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Mob City, Pilgrimage (2017), Shot Caller (2017), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Anxiety, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Flirting, Frank is a dad, Grief/Mourning, Hand Jobs, Heavy Angst, Homophobic Language, Hurt No Comfort, Identity Issues, Immortality, Introspection, Loss, M/M, Magic, Mentions of Violence, Mild Gore, Mutual Masturbation, Mythology - Freeform, Oral Sex, Post-Season/Series 02, Recovered Memories, References to Depression, Reincarnation, Rimming, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Self-Harm, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Tags May Change, Violent Thoughts, frank is a sad boy, frank is beyond questioning life, frank is tired and sad, he pretty much stopped giving that much of a shit, let the man have a family, nothin else to do about it, possibly, shit happens and he just rolls with it, the avengers are getting involved, these dumb gays smh, woo him with food
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2019-10-13 08:35:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 33,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17484788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVagabondBoy/pseuds/TheVagabondBoy
Summary: Frank has a lot of questions.Memories of past lives fill his head, along with more questions than he thinks he could ever find answers to. Nothing makes sense anymore.How can he have memories of the crusades, of Italy in the 18th century, of World War Two, of ancient Rome, when heknowsthat he is Frank Castle, born and raised in New York City?Is it possible that both are true?But if so,how?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [UmiAzuma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/UmiAzuma/gifts).



At first, he thought he was just talented.

That was _always_  his talent. Killing people. Hurting people. He had a gift for it. People always said he did. No matter where he was doing it, who he was killing… Everyone always seemed able to admit that he was talented at _killing._

Not only that, he had a talent for _surviving._

Hell, he took a bullet to the head and walked away. _Twice._

It seemed like no matter what hurt people put on him, he just wouldn’t _die._

So he thought it was his talent. Somehow, his talent helped him avoid the fatal injuries. Helped him stay on the right side of _alive_  and _dead,_  even if it was just barely.

Then he started chalking it up to skill. Frank was a skilled man. He was trained to fight, kill, survive. That was his life for years. Just _survive._  And now it was like that again. Maybe he had just learned from experience. He had learned the skill of keeping himself alive. Of crawling out of the pit of death, even if his body begged his mind to just let it all be over. And his body seemed to do that a lot.

And still, Frank just didn’t die.

So he decided that if it’s not his talent or his skill, then it must have been luck.

Frank didn’t believe in luck. Not much, at least.

But what else could it be?

Shot in the head two times over and neither of them killed him? Beaten and tortured, bruised and bloodied, cut up and broken down, pushed to the brink of death a hundred times over and still he was here?

It couldn’t be anything but luck.

But when it continued... When his _luck,_  which _always_  runs out, just _didn’t run out…_

He started asking questions. He started wondering.

A delusion of grandeur, maybe. Maybe that was all his wondering was.

All his questions…

In the end, they all lead to the same place.

If it wasn’t _talent,_  and it wasn’t _skill,_  and it wasn’t _luck…_

Maybe… Maybe he just _couldn’t_  die. Maybe he was stuck living. Maybe he just didn’t have the _ability_  to die.

See what he meant about _delusions of grandeur?_

Him, Frank Castle. Immortal. Unkillable.

That’d sure as hell be something, wouldn’t it?

So he loaded his gun and decided to see for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have Thoughts about this, so it might continue and turn into a bigger fic, but who knows


	2. Chapter 2

He woke up with his head feeling like it was exploding.

He opened his eyes and felt groggy and woozy, everything seemed to be a little blurry around the edges. It all rolled back into focus in just a few moments.

He was alive.

He was still alive.

Frank could feel the gun in his hand, the concrete he lay on, the blood dried into his hair and his skin, the hole in the side of his head still gaping open. He could _almost_  feel the bullet sitting somewhere in there.

He shot himself in the head, point blank, and he survived.

His stomach turned.

So this meant it wasn’t a delusion. He really was… He couldn’t- He wasn’t-

It was hard to understand it.

His body hurt as he rolled over onto his side. It was a struggle to sit up. His head was all scrambled, and rightfully so, he figured. There _was_  bullet somewhere in his brain, after all. He stumbled as he got to his feet. He held his gut, which felt like it was on a riot inside him. Fuck, he was going to throw up…

He made his way over to the corner of the basement he was hiding out in. To his bag, his things. He sat down on the ground with an exhausted groan. He started digging through his bag until he found the first aid kit.

Tongs, tongs, tongs, where were the tongs?

He took off his belt and bit down on it. He felt around the side of his head. His fingers slipped blindly into the hole there, the blood oozing out. Uch, his brain was all mushy and shit. His skull was all fucked too. He dug in with the tongs. He bit down harder on the dry leather.

He managed to remove a few shards of bone, which was…weird. That was his skull. He had a piece of his skull in his hand. Best to get them out of the way. Maybe he could clean them off once he got the bullet out, then try to puzzle them back in before sewing up the skin. Wouldn’t do him any good to have a big soft spot on his head, like a damn baby or some shit.

Metal clinked against metal.

_The bullet._

He clawed at the concrete floor with his other hand, the tongs digging around in his head, stirring up his brains.

He tried to keep his breathing steady as he pulled the tongs and the bullet out.

Frank found the disinfectant and a little plastic cup from the kit. Put all the bone shards in the cup, poured in some disinfectant. Good, clean them up. He poured the disinfectant over his head. He shouted at the burn and the sting, pounding his fist against the brick wall behind him, feet kicking as if to shove away whatever was causing him this pain. Washed off his hands a little too.

Flashlight. Mirror. Tongs. Needle. Thread. Cup of bones. Hole in his head.

_Great._

Fuck, with the light and the mirror he could actually __look__  at his own fucking brain.

His hands were shaking but he tried his best to put the bones back in. He hoped his body would do a good job at fixing it. He got them all in some kind of decent order, then sewed the skin up. Disinfected again, just to be safe.

Good. Okay. Perfect. At least there wasn’t a big open hole in his head anymore. That was a plus, he supposed.

He found his bottle of whiskey in his bag. He popped the cap off and took a long few swallows.

Okay.

So Frank couldn’t die.

What now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruh


	3. Chapter 3

Everything felt pointless now somehow.

What was the point of doing anything? He was just going to…keep living. If he was going to live forever, why even bother with this whole Punisher bullshit? The creeps would just keep coming. He wasn’t sure he could keep fighting for forever. For the rest of time. Or…however long his apparent _immortality_ lasted.

Why should he do anything? None of it mattered. Everyone else would just disappear and he’d be left behind. Like always. So why even bother?

He could go away, maybe. Forget everything. Travel across the world. Hide himself away somewhere. Just…be alone.

No, he had tried that before. Didn’t work. It never worked.

The memory of Beth bleeding and crying in the back of the van flashed through his mind.

She was lucky she didn’t die. He was glad she didn’t. Relieved. Happy she could go home to her boy.

He wondered, for just a second, if Beth would have him back if he went to her.

Frank honestly chuckled to himself at the thought. No. No, she wouldn’t have him. Hell, she’d probably pump him full of lead with that shotgun she kept under the bar if he walked back in. Best if he didn’t think about her. He’d gotten her hurt enough as it was.

He lay back and stared up at the sky, the stars lighting up the darkness. This rooftop was a nice place. It was a long time since he’d been on a rooftop without a sniper rifle and a target.

He wondered what would happen if he jumped off. Probably just break a good chunk of his bones. Wouldn’t that be a waste of time… Despite his _immortality,_ it didn’t seem like he was prone to faster healing, or anything like that. Hm, maybe a higher pain tolerance than most people, but that seemed to be about it. He almost wished he healed faster. That could’ve been useful.

Maybe he should try to contact the Avengers. Or maybe those X-Men assholes. Maybe Murdock and his pack of idiots. One of them was kind of invulnerable, right? Maybe he knew something about what the hell was happening to Frank. Maybe he could explain it.

Fuck… Frank just wanted to understand this, whatever _this_  was.

Maybe he could use it. Do some good. That was all he wanted in the end. Do good in the world. Help. Maybe protect some people, maybe save some people. His methods were shitty as hell, he knew that, but it got _results._

So maybe he would keep fighting anyway. Who cared about him? Who cared about what happened to him, if he died or lived forever, as long as he could protect as many people, save as many people, as he could? And with an eternity, he could probably save more people than he killed.

_“Frank!”_

Frank grunted, waking from his thoughts. The stars fell out of focus and Murdock became crisp and clean in his sight. He stood over Frank, dressed in his fugly red pyjamas as always.

“Hey,” Frank said.

He didn’t bother moving.

“Why you here, Frank?” Murdock asked bitingly. “Who you plannin’ on killin’ now? ‘M gonna figure it out sooner or later, so you might as well just tell me who you’re staking out. Save me the trouble.”

Frank sighed, turning his eyes back to the stars. “Ain’t doin’ nothin’. Ain’t plannin’ on killin’ no one. Not right now, at least. I just…wanted to look at the stars for a bit. Speakin’ of, you mind movin’? Blockin’ the view here, man.”

The Devil hummed, his arms crossing tightly. “Quit bullshitting me, Frank. _Tell me who you’re planning to kill.”_

“For someone who makes a livin’ on tellin’ if someone’s lyin’ or tellin’ the truth, you sure are shit at it,” Frank muttered. “Told ya. Just lookin’ at the stars. Doin’ some thinkin’.”

Murdock let out a deep sigh. He seemed to believe Frank this time. He sat down next to Frank, then lay back too.

“So what’re you thinking about, then?” he asked. “I’ve been told it helps to solve a problem if you talk it through.”

The marine scoffed, chuckling and shaking his head. “Told ya this too, Murdock. Don’t need no shrink.”

He grunted when Murdock elbowed his in the side. _Wow,_  he had sharp elbows, _Jesus…_

“I’m tryin’ to be _nice,_  Frank. Ever heard of that? Or have you always been a giant asshole?”

He chuckled again. “Think that depends on who ya ask.”

“C’mon. Tell me what’s on your mind. Maybe I can help,” Murdock said, softer in the voice this time around. “All I ever wanted was to help you. You realize that, right?”

“Yeah… Guess I do. _A’right,_  Red, here we go,” Frank said and sighed. “So… Imagine you got this…this _secret._  Didn’t even know ya had it., but ya stumbled on it. Realized it was there. That it’s always been there, I guess.”

Murdock hummed. “I think I’m following.”

“And…now you dunno what to do with it. Doesn’t really change anythin’, but at the same time, it changes everythin’. You can’t say how, but…you can feel that it does. _And_  at the same time, ya almost feel like an idiot for not realizin’ it sooner. And you want help to understand it, this _secret._  But ya dunno where it’s safe to go. Who can keep your secret. So ya just…sit with it. Waitin’ for somethin’ to happen. Somethin’ or someone to…tell ya what to do with it. But no one can do _that_ ‘cause it’s a secret and no one knows. And then that’s it. That’s the end of it, I guess.”

Again, Murdock hummed at him.

“Frank… Whatever this secret is, you can tell me. Just…so you know. ‘Cause it looks like this secret is eating at you. And like I said, I just wanna help you. So if you wanna tell me the secret, you can. And if you don’t, you don’t have to. But I’ll try to help however I can.”

It was, honestly, a good offer. It sounded good.

But he was worried. What if the secret got out? What if people knew? What would happen then? Everyone would want him. Want to figure out if he really _was_  immortal, and if he was, _how_  was he immortal? How he became like this.

Frank knew Murdock was a good guy. Wanted the same things as Frank did; to do good in the world, help people, protect people. He was trustworthy. He kept his word. If he said he wouldn’t spill it, then he’d take it to his grave, Frank knew that.

Honestly, would Murdock even know what to do with this? He’d probably be just as lost as Frank was. Why drag him into something that could turn dangerous, if there was no need for it?

“Lemme think ‘bout it, Red,” Frank said as he got up, Murdock sitting up too. “But, uh… Thanks. For…y’know?”

Murdock snorted, shaking his head. “For listening to you, _the big, bad Punisher,_  whine about his emotions?” he said, jokingly.

Frank actually chuckled at that. Funny guy…

“Yeah. Yeah, for that.”

He headed for the fire escape. Murdock stayed behind.

“See ya ‘round, Red.”

 _“Hey,_  that’s _Doctor Murdock_  to you, mister! And I expect _payment_ for our next session!”

Frank rolled his eyes as he climbed down the ladder. “Yeah, yeah…”

_“Therapy’s good for you, Frank! You’re making excellent progress!”_

The marine scoffed. What a prick…


	4. Chapter 4

Frank had a dream. It was a strange dream, and it stuck with him as he woke up. It was just such an _odd_  thing to dream about! It wasn’t like any he had had before.

It was him, but…not _really_  him. It looked like him, it was a person with his body and his face but somehow he just knew that it wasn’t actually _him._  And he was in a strange place. There were a lot of people there and they were dressed all weird. Like…in some sort of shrouds or gowns, or something like that. He was surrounded by high stone walls, and those people were all up on top of the walls, looking down at him. There was sand between his toes. It was scorching hot. He was wearing weird clothes too. Not a shroud, like the other people, but…some kind of leather. And it was heavy. It felt like metal. Maybe armor? And he had a sword. Why would he have a sword? Then he was shouting something, and the people were shouting back, then…

Then he woke up.

It was…strange. He’d never had a dream like that before. Was it just his imagination, or did it _mean_  something?

Was it a memory?

If he _was_  immortal, then who was to say he _hadn’t_  lived through that?

But that seemed like some gladiator shit, or something! That was _thousands_  of years ago! How would Frank have been there? _How,_  when he remembered being a kid in the modern world? He’d grown up right here in New York! Not some…ancient roman shithole. He knew it _couldn’t_  be true. That it couldn’t be _him._  It couldn’t!

And yet it felt so real.

In the same way that he could swear that _wasn’t_  him in that dream, he could also swear that _it was._ It was _so vivid._  Too vivid to be _just_  a dream, too vivid to be _just_  his imagination. God, it felt like it was him, but in a _distant_  sort of way. He couldn’t put it into words even if he tried!

He felt disconnected from it. It felt like what Curt had described a phantom limb feeling like. Real, but not real. There, but not there. Two realities butting heads and his brain unable to make sense of them.

Thinking too much about it made his fucking head ache. He wasn’t used to this weird shit happening to _him._  He’d heard Murdock and his friends all usually had to handle some freaky magic shit, but _Frank?_  That wasn’t exactly his territory.

Fuck, he needed to figure this shit out, though. He’d go crazy if he didn’t get some fucking answers.

He sighed when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and checked who it was. _Murdock?_  Hm, _speak of the Devil,_  Frank supposed. Pretty literally, this time.

“Gonna have to cancel our next appointment, Doc,” he said in way of greeting as he answered.

Murdock snorted at him. “I don’t think you wanna do that, Frank. Got some people who wanna meet you.”

Frank sighed, laying back in his cot. “Yeah? Who?”

“The Avengers.”

Color Frank admittedly surprised.

“The hell do those assholes want?”

Murdock sighed. “Who knows? All _I_  know, is that they were pretty damn insistent on wanting to talk to you,” he explained. “I know you’ve got an itchy trigger finger but let’s _not_  shoot the messenger on this one, okay? They came to me ‘cause they’d heard we worked together a couple times. Figured maybe I had a way to contact you. Figured correctly, I suppose.”

Frank rubbed at his eyes. Shit… What the hell could the Avengers want with him? Hm, maybe they finally decided to confront him about his work. Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried that. Probably wouldn’t be the last either.

“Fine. Y’know that abandoned apartment building near Chuck’s Pizza?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Tell ‘em to wait there tonight. I’ll get there when I get there.”

He could almost _hear_  Murdock rolling his eyes at him. “Got it. I’ll let them know. Bring money. My psychiatric counselling isn’t _free,_  y’know?”

The marine scoffed. “Mind if I pay ya in pizza rolls and garlic knots from Chuck’s Pizza?”

“Only if you buy beer too.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Frank said. “Beer, pizza rolls, and garlic knots for Doctor Murdock. See ya there.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

Frank snorted at the joke as they both hung up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> matt and frank are masters of flirting disguised as humor


	5. Chapter 5

Frank yawned. He balanced a box of garlic knots and a box of pizza rolls in one hand, carrying a six pack in the other. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all once that fucking dream woke him up after no more than an hour of rest.

Didn’t matter much. He was pretty used to functioning on minimal amounts of sleep.

He had spent most of the day staking out the meeting place he was currently heading to. He’d seen Murdock arrive and enter through the roof top entrance, sending a quick wave in Frank’s direction. He’d watched two of the Avengers get there too; Rogers and a blonde woman. The woman had gotten there early to check the place out. She no doubt spotted Frank in his perch, but she didn’t approach him yet, so that was at least _something,_  he supposed. She seemed to respect his distance; his need to, just like she did, size up the situation before charging in.

He hadn’t left his perch until it seemed like everyone who was going to attend had arrived. Smaller chance of any unwanted surprises that way. He headed straight for Chuck’s Pizza and picked up Murdock’s _‘payment’._

Frank yawned again. He managed to thumb open the topmost of the two boxes, which turned out to be the pizza rolls. Even with the six pack in hand, he could pick out one of the rolls. Woah, these things were _huge._  Maybe getting _twenty_  of them was a mistake.

 _Eh, who cares,_  he decided. They’d hold up over the night; he’d just have the leftovers for breakfast.

He climbed the steps to the building. The front door was propped open with a brick, making it easy for him to push it open with his shoulder and step inside.

The whole gang lounged in the disheveled lobby. Murdock hung around the edges of whatever conversation was going on.

 _“Ey, fuckface,_  come get your fuckin’ food,” he said loudly into the room.

They all looked up. Murdock grinned and hurried over.

“Took ya long ‘nough! Smelled ya comin’ from two blocks away,” the Devil said as he grabbed a roll and a beer.

“How’s that my fuckin’ fault, asshole?” Frank questioned.

He set the six pack and the boxes down on the floor and removed his bag from over his shoulder. He grabbed a bottle, popping the cap as Murdock did the same. Their bottled clinked in a toast.

“Doctor,” Frank hummed.

“Doctor,” Murdock mirrored.

They both drank for a moment.

“A’right, spill the beans, flag boy,” Frank said then, looking to the Avengers. “I’m here. The hell you want?”

Rogers and the woman looked at each other, confused, for a moment before Stars And Stripes himself stepped up to the plate. Frank grabbed a garlic knot.

“We’ve been wanting to talk to you for a while, Castle. Then it seemed you were dead. And then it seemed you were not. Then you were dead again, then alive again. It’s gettin’ kinda hard to keep track of, wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t know the half of it, wingnut,” Frank said, chewing on his snack and sipping his drink.

Rogers hummed. “Now that you’re alive again, Castle, we decided it was time to stop putting this conversation off for any longer. God only knows when you’ll be dead again.”

Frank couldn’t help but scoff. “Don’t you worry, Miss America. Somethin’ tells me I won’t be kickin’ the bucket any time soon.”

“Is that so?” Rogers said.

“Yup. Just this _feelin’_  I got.”

Murdock groaned at them both. “Alright, assholes, let’s call the pissing contest a draw!” he said, making the woman purse her lips tightly yo keep from laughing. _“Castle,_  shut up. _Rogers,_  say what you came here to say.”

For once, Frank held up his hands in surrender.

“Very well,” Rogers conceded. “Castle, you’re not judge, jury, and executioner. Stop what you’re doing. Leave it the police, or to us. We’re giving you a chance to leave this peacefully. If you don’t, we will have to take action.”

Frank grabbed another garlic knot. Those things were fucking _awesome._

“Whaddya say, Castle? Are you gonna quit?” the Captain questioned.

Frank shoved the whole garlic knot in his mouth, chewing on the soft, fluffy dough for a moment.

“Nah.”

Rogers hummed. “I pretty much figured you’d say somethin’ like that. Natasha?”

The woman stepped up too.

She was quick. She pulled her gun on Frank. He didn’t even have the time to _think_  about drawing his own weapon, before she fired.

 _“Frank!”_  he heard Murdock shout.

God, getting shot in the head was _the worst!_


	6. Chapter 6

Frank groaned at the pounding ache blossoming through his head. _Fuck,_  how was he even still awake? Jesus, that bitch shot him in the head, how _rude_  was that?!

He sat up.

His vision went red for a moment, when the blood flowed out of the hole in his forehead and down into his eyes. He wiped at his face with his sleeves, ignoring the smell of beer that had spilled on his hand when he hit the ground and the bottle shattered. With another pained groan, he balled up his left sleeve and pressed it hard to his forehead. Hopefully, that would stem the bleeding a bit.

He managed to reach his bag. He dragged it closer. _Wow,_  his head was spinning like crazy now. Oh, that made him nauseous, fuck… Frank found the first aid kit in just a moment and dug around in it until he could find the tongs too.

This was starting to become a habit, and Frank wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.

Frank grunted and shouted and swore as he felt around in his head again. Blood spurted now and then. Shit, he was getting lightheaded. And it was hard to focus his vision on anything in particular. It was hard to focus _any_  of his senses on anything.

_Oh, okay, he was passing out. Okay, yeah, passing out was a good idea, that sounded nice, let’s do that._

“Frank? Frank, _stay with me,_ stay awake, okay?”

Rough hands cradled his face. His own hand slumped to the side, the tongs slipping out of his grip. Something red and fuzzy was really close in front of him. What was that thing?

“Breathe, Frank, just breathe,” the red thing told him.

Frank hissed as a sharp pain stabbed through his head. He tried to pull away from it but the rough hands held him still.

“Don’t move, okay? I’m just getting the tongs out, Frank, it’s okay, you’re okay,” the red thing kept telling him.

 _“I thought you said he was just a human, Tasha!”_  someone yelled.

 _“He is! Everything I’ve seen says he’s just a normal, every day human! Nothing special about him!”_  another voice shouted.

_“Then please, do tell me how the hell he just survived a bullet to the brain, then sat up and started digging said bullet out of his own head without a goddamn care in the world!”_

“Will you assholes just _shut the hell up?!”_  the red thing’s voice barked, making the other two go quiet. “I’m kinda performing _brain surgery_  here!”

Mmmh, he liked this big blurry red thing. It had a nice voice. He wanted to listen to it some more.

“Either you help me out here, or you get the hell out, got it?!” the red thing shouted.

 _“We’re gonna have to figure this out,”_  one of the distant voices said. _“Call for a quinjet and have them prep medical. We’re takin’ him to the Complex.”_

A big white thing appeared near the red thing. Frank was having a hard time focusing on either of them.

*

He woke up on what looked like a hospital room. Hm, that was a little worrying. Hey, at least he wasn’t strapped down to the bed this time around, so _sliver lining,_  right?

“Frank?”

Murdock?

He looked around and sure enough, Murdock sat by his bedside, still in his dumb Halloween costume.

“Wha- What happened?”

Murdock dragged his chair closer. “You got shot in the head.”

“Explains the headache.”

“Frank, you were in _surgery_  for four hours to get the bullet out.”

“No shit?”

Four hours? Hm, more sleep than he’d gotten in the last few days combined.

“Frank, I think you’re missing the point here.”

The marine grunted as he tried, and somehow succeeded, to sit up. _Fuck…_  Yup, that sure was one hell of a headache. He reached out to his side-table. Uch, his hand was all weird and numb from the drugs still. He pawed over the tray of pre-packaged, plastic-covered food until he found his pudding cup. _Ooooh, red flavour! That was his favorite!_

He found the spoon too, and set about trying to tear off the plastic on the cup. Jesus, why was this really fucking difficult all of a sudden? He all but threw the cup at Murdock with a grunt. Murdock sighed, but tore off the plastic and handed it back to him.

_“Frank.”_

Frank let out a delighted noise around a spoonful of red jello. “Wha’?”

_“You took a bullet right to the forehead. You survived.”_

Frank shrugged. “God works in mysterious ways.”

“Frank, I will shove that pudding cup so far up your ass you’ll be sneezing red jello. _Explain yourself.”_

The marine sighed again. “I dunno, okay? I only knew about this for, like, two days now. I don’t fuckin’ know _anythin’,_  alright? One day I realized I had a couple questions. Questions turned into a theory. Theory turned into me shootin’ myself in the head to prove or disprove the theory. Survived that one too. Theory became fact, I guess.”

 _“Okay._  That’s…a lot. To take in. First of all, though, _you shot yourself in the head?”_

“Yeah? No one wondered why there were _two_  bullet holes in my head instead’a one?”

Murdock made a face at him, something that looked like confusion. It was kind of hard to tell with that dumb mas on, though.

“Frank, there was only one bullet hole. All we did was wonder why the hell you had a patch on your head without a wound under it.”

What? Just one? That was…weird. Because Frank was _pretty damn sure_  he’d shot himself in the head a few nights ago. Since y’know, that wasn’t really the kind of thing you’d be likely to _forget._

Weird.

So he was wrong, then. He did heal faster.

Well, that opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

The door opened. _Oh, great,_  Miss America was back. And oh, yeah, the bitch who shot Frank. And a whole bunch of other people.

Probably time for the daily mandatory group hug or whatever. _Great…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> much like their writer, the characters in my fics never have a clue what the fuck is going on


	7. Chapter 7

“Mister Castle,” Rogers said.

They all stood at the foot of his bed. Murdock had gotten out of his seat, standing close to Frank’s bedside, his hand on Frank’s shoulder.

“Captain Underpants,” Frank replied. “Back to shoot me again? I mean, go ahead, fire at will. Just not the head this time, ‘kay? Already got this _massive_  headache from the last time.”

“Yes, about that,” Stark said, standing next to Rogers. “A few questions. First and foremost, _how are you alive?”_

Frank took another spoonful of jello as he shrugged. “Got a hard head, I guess.”

Rogers hummed. “According to the scans we ran while in the air, the bullet _shattered_  your skull,” he said. _“But_  once you got into surgery, the doctors had to cut your skull open to get to the bullet. _Which means,_  your skull healed together like nothing ever happened, in just under ten minutes. How is that?”

“Y’know, that’s a real good question, Captain Kirk,” Frank admitted. “And I don’t got an answer for it. Really, I don’t. Wish I fuckin’ did, but I don’t.”

“Do you really think we’re gonna believe that?” the blonde woman next to Rogers asked.

Frank shrugged. “Believe whatever the hell you want, ma’am. I ain’t lyin.”

“He isn’t lying,” Murdock agreed. “I can hear his heartbeat. They… _waver_ when you lie. His has been rock-steady since he woke up. He knows just as much as we do. _Nothing.”_

“And why, exactly, do you assume you’re more believable than he is?” the woman questioned at Murdock.

 _“Hey!_  You leave him outta this, a’right?” Frank told her gruffly. “He don’t know nothin’ ‘bout nothin’, yeah?”

“Why are we even talking about this?” some other asshole in the Scooby Gang said. “He’s a maniac killer and we got him in custody! Put him some super max, or whatever!”

“And violate his right to a fair trial?” Murdock said. “Yeah, _that_  will go over great for you guys in the press! I can see the headlines now! _Avengers shoot innocent man, survives, is then imprisoned without trial!”_

 _“Innocent?!”_  Rogers shouted. “He’s a mass-murderer! If anything, we’re doing the world a favor!”

_“Innocent until proven guilty!”_

Frank sighed as they all continued shouting at each other. Shit, this wasn’t helping his headache. He tossed the empty pudding cup back onto the side-table and laid back.

He wished they’d all just _shut the hell up!_  His head was booming with pain and their loud voices were only making it worse. The ache stabbed through his brain, right down his spine, spreading through his body. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Frank?”

He looked up. Everyone was staring at him again.

“Your nose is bleeding.”

What?

Frank’s whole arm felt like jelly when he raised his hand to his face. He touched his fingers to his lip, and they came away red with blood. He wiped his face on the hem of his papery hospital gown.

Another stab of pain shot through his head. It was bad enough to make him let out a pained shout. He clutched at his head.

He dragged himself out of bed, despite Murdock’s attempt to keep him laying down. Fuck, the covers tangled around his legs, an IV tugged at his arm but Frank ripped it out. He stumbled on the covers. Everyone was being loud again, telling him to go back to bed, their hands were on him and tried to forcibly _put_ him back in bed. He tried to shake them off.

His vision whited out for a moment.

His whole body folded and he collapsed to the floor.

*

“Frank!”

Matt crossed the room in only a few, short steps. He fell on his knees beside Frank’s seemingly unconscious body. He tried to shake Frank, he leaned in to listen to his breathing and his heart beating. At least Frank seemed to be alive, still.

In a flash, Frank woke up.

He grabbed at Matt’s suit and somehow flipped them over. Matt grunted as he landed, hard, on his back, Frank’s heavy body weighing on his chest.

 _“Who are you?! Where am I?!”_  Frank shouted at him.

The Avengers grabbed at Frank. They dragged him off Matt, even as Frank tried to fight his way free from them.

“Gordo!” Frank shouted. “Bible! _Don!_  Git yer fuckin’ hands off’a me, ya Kraut sonsabitches! Don! Gordo!”

Matt got to his feet. He all but leapt across the room to meet Frank where he struggled against the tight grips of a supersoldier and a God.

“Frank! Frank, listen to me! It’s me! You know me! You know who I am!” Matt tried, hoping to reason with him.

“Git the fuck ‘way fr’m me, ya piece’a shit!” Frank yelled, kicking after Matt. _“Frank?!_  What’chu talkin’ ‘bout?! Ain’t no _Frank!_  Get off’a me! Lemme fuckin’ go!”

 _“Let him go!”_  Matt told the Avengers. “Let go of him!”

They seemed reluctant to do what they were told, but…they did, after a moment. Frank, or…whoever he seemed to think he was, shoved them all away, stumbling back from them.

“Goddamn bastards, puttin’ ‘em dirty fuckin’ hands all o’er me, what the fuck’s wrong with y’all?!”

Matt stepped between him and the Avengers. No one seemed too happy with each other at the moment. It would be best if they had some distance between them.

“Okay! Okay, if you’re not Frank, then who are you?” he asked.

The man wiped his hands over his face. “Travis. Grady Travis. Private First Class. Who the fuck‘re you?”

 _What?_  Frank’s heartbeat was hastened, but unwavering. He was telling the truth. Whether what he was saying was actually true or not, he certainly _believed_  it to be true.

“That doesn’t matter,” Matt said. “Where are you from? Wh- Where do you think you are? Who are those people you were calling for?”

“Arkansas,” _Grady_  spat at them. _“Where I think I am?_  ‘M in fuckin’ Nazi fuckin’ Germany! ‘S Krautland!”

“Grady. Okay, _Grady._  Tell us about yourself. Okay? We’re in Nazi Germany. Why are you here?”

Frank, _Grady,_  no matter his name, he shook his head. “The- The, uh, the tank. Fury… She… Nah, she don’t- Top don’t, he ain’t- A-And Gordo, he, uh-”

He was breathing harder and harder, he was shaking, shivering.

“Grady?” Matt said, slowly moving closer, hands up to show he was unarmed. “It’s okay, Grady. Just breathe for me. How about you sit down, okay? Let’s just have a seat and we can talk things through.”

Grady shook his head still. “Nah. You don’t- You don’t know nothin’, man, nothin’.”

He sank to a knee, holding his chest, breathing hard.

Something in his demeanor changed. He shifted. His posture, his nature, his fucking _energy_  shifted in one single moment. Grady had been angry and _wild._  But this… This was calm and collected. Still angry, but calmly so.

“Grady? Are you okay?”

“What? Who’s Grady?” Frank asked, slowly standing up again.

Matt hoped it was Frank, at least.

This was _insane._  Crazy. Matt had never heard of anything like this. What was happening?

“I’m… I’m Joe. Joe Teague. Detective. Los Angeles Police Department. Wh- Where am I? How did I get here?”

Matt took a deep breath. Frank, Grady, Joe. Okay. This was just getting more and more insane by the second.

“Joe. Nice to meet you, Joe,” Matt said, offering his hand out. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you my name. You usually call me Red, though. You’re pretty imaginative that way.”

Joe nodded. He shook Matt’s hand, looking around the room at everyone else there as he did.

“Okay. Red. Tell me, Red, where am I?”

“That’s…a hard question to answer. If you can answer some of _my_  questions, then we’ll all try to answer yours. Okay? That sound good?”

Joe nodded.

“Okay. What year is it?”

“1947.”

“Where do you _think_ you are?”

“I dunno. Some hospital in LA?”

“Do you recognize anyone in this room?”

“No. I mean…I know the Captain. Everyone does. I thought he was mostly a story, though. Seen his posters. Saw one of his shows once. Didn’t think he looked much more than any of the rest of us. Didn’t see the fuss about him. Heard he was _a prick,_  too.”

“You don’t know anyone named Grady Travis? Or a Frank Castle?”

“No. Never heard the names. Should I know ‘em?”

“I’m…not sure,” Matt admitted. “Here. C’mon. How about you get back in bed, yeah? You’re in the hospital for a reason, right?”

Joe nodded. He shuffled towards the bed. He let Matt rest his hand on his shoulder to lead him.

They hadn’t even made it halfway before Joe staggered. He grabbed at Matt, and Matt did the same to him, hoping to keep him on his feet. Joe held his head for a moment, grunting at what seemed like a second of intense pain.

“Joe? Joe, are you okay?” Matt asked.

Joe’s knees folded under him. Matt struggled to help him _slowly_  to the ground.

“It’s okay, Joe. You’re okay.”

Joe, Frank, Grady, whoever it was now; he shoved Matt away. He shuffled back, pressing himself against the side of the bed, head turning quickly as he looked around frantically.

Then, he stopped.

He froze.

He seemed to be staring at someone standing among the Avengers. He raised his hand slowly. He pointed at the person. Who was it?

In a burst of energy, he was back on his feet. He shuffled across the room, he pushed past all the Avengers. There was a boy with them, a young boy, only a teenager. He pulled the boy into his arms and hugged him tight. The boy seemed shocked and confused. Even more so, when Frank sobbed into his shoulder for a moment before pressing frantic kisses to the boy’s head.

The boy hugged him back, at a loss for what else to do.

Frank cradled the boy’s face gently in his hands. He was crying, tears pouring down his cheeks. No one seemed to understand what was happening, least of all the boy Frank suddenly seemed to recognize.

“Diarmuid… God be with us, I couldn’t save them. The Brothers, I tried but I was weak. But you! I saved you! I saved you, didn’t I? And the relic, do you have the relic? Where is Geraldus? Did he take it?”

“I-I-I don’t know,” the boy said. “What relic? Who’s Geraldus?”

Frank moved away from the boy, looking around the room. “Where are my clothes? My sword? I need to find the relic. It needs to go back to the monastery. And God forgive me, my vow…" he said, making the sign of the cross over himself. "I need to pray for forgiveness for breaking my vow. I spoke to De Merville before I killed him. God will forgive me, I hope. I need to vow before the cross again, until I have paid my penance. _We need to go, Diarmuid! Now!”_

He strode towards the door.

But as he reached to push it open, he collapsed once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sweats*


	8. Chapter 8

Everyone was standing over him when he woke up. They almost seemed to be _floating_  somewhere above him.

“Frank? Is it you?” Murdock asked.

That was a dumb question. Of course it was Frank, who else would it be?

He tried to speak but only managed a low grunt.

“You don’t have to talk, Frank,” Murdock told him, squeezing Frank’s shoulder gently. “Just…grunt for yes. Sound good?”

Frank grunted again. Shit, his throat was all dry and his head pounded. It felt like the world’s worst hangover, but multiplied by a hundred.

“Okay. Do you… Do you recognize any of these names? Grady Travis. Joe Teague. Diarmuid. Are any of those familiar to you?”

Frank repeated them in his mind. _Grady Travis, Joe Teague, Diarmuid._

He… He _did_  know those names. Why did he know those names? They were so familiar to him and he couldn’t say how.

He grunted, for yes.

At that, everyone just seemed even more confused.

“Are you sure you couldn’t find _anything_  on those names?” Murdock asked, head tilted as though to look at Stark.

Stark shrugged. “Nothin’ except for the last one. Just…some monk, from Ireland, around the times of one of the crusades. He wrote a story, something like a legend, about a _relic_  of some sort. Like, a big magic rock, or somethin’?”

“Just like Frank said,” Murdock said, nodding.

“Yeah. Except the story had some massive holes in it. It was…like a part of it had been completely deleted. _Or_ he just refused to write about it.”

“Looks like him,” Frank said, voice dry and raspy and hoarse.

Everyone looked at him again.

“What’s that?” Murdock said.

“Diarmuid. Him,” Frank wheezed, attempting to nod his head towards the kid standing near the foot of his bed. “Looks just like him. Spittin’ image…”

“Me?” the kid said, pointing to himself. “Oh… I-I guess that explains it.”

“Explains what? What happened?”

God, his throat was so dry that it almost hurt to talk.

“You don’t remember any of it?” Murdock questioned. “Anything at all?”

“I… My nose. It started bleedin’, right? Then… I dunno, it’s…fuzzy. Y’know, like an old TV? ‘Cept the antenna ain’t set right? Picture’s all blurry and wobbly and fuzzy,” Frank tried to explain. “Water…?”

The man on his left, Frank didn’t know their name, poured a glass of water and helped him drink, gently lifting his head and holding the glass to his lips.

Fuck, yeah, that was _refreshing._

“Tell me what happened,” he said as the man set the now empty glass aside again.

Murdock started talking. And if all of what he said was true, then… Fuck, there had to be something seriously wrong with Frank. Something in his head. Something beyond this whole… _immortality_  thing.

Who the hell were Grady and Joe? How the hell did Frank know who Diarmuid was? And moreover, why would he think he knew what the guy looked like?

If his head hadn’t been hurting before, it sure as hell was now.

This was a mess. A big, weird, confusing mess, and Frank had no clue what the hell to do.

_A muddy battlefield, the smell of fresh corpses and old corpses alike, mud everywhere, hot and cramped, shoved in the tank, the Fury, big ol’ girl is what she was, a good one too, carried ‘em all through a whole lotta shit, protected their hides like nobodies business, and there was Don and Gordo and Bible and Red, and then there was Norman too after Red was gone, and there was a big fight and they were doin’ their best, man, but it wasn’t enough, and they were just dyin’ all over the place, and Bible and Gordo were gone and Grady didn’t know what the hell to do, he was lost in this fucking mess of a war with Don and Norman and they were stuck in the Fury, and then-_

_Then he was in Los Angeles and everything was calm, and his was Joe and he remembered being a Marine instead of an army man, and fighting in the war as Joe but now the war was over and he was back in LA and he was a cop, and there was so much happening, his brother was there and his ex-wife, and he was working for the mob and they were on him all the time and his superiors at the precinct were on him too because they didn’t really trust him, things were happening, things were happening so fast, he could smell the cigarettes and taste the coffee and he could see his desk in front of him and his colleagues all around him._

What was happening?

“It’s me,” he said, the words coming out without his permission. “It’s all me. I… I remember…being Grady. And Joe, too. And…Diarmuid and his Brothers, they called me the Mute. I didn’t speak. Took a vow of silence after I came back from the crusade. Constantinople.”

“Frank, what are you saying?” Matt asked, squeezing his shoulder again.

Frank looked up at him. Everything was blurry again, but this time, it was because of the tears welling up in Frank’s eyes. Why was he crying?

“I remember all these _things_  but I-” he said, voice wavering as the tears sprang forth. He tried to hide his face in his hands. “Don’t make no sense, Red, don’t make no sense at all.”

A chair scraped across the floor at Matt pulled it up to the side of the bed again. He sat back down, real close by, and took Frank by the wrists. He pulled Frank’s hands away from his face gently.

“It’s okay, Frank,” he said softly. “It’s not your fault. This is…all really confusing. For all of us. But it’s not your fault, okay?”

Frank swallowed around the tight knot in his throat. He nodded.

He watched, both worried and confused, as Matt let go of him again, only to put his hands to his own face and remove his mask. Matt smiled at him.

“We’re gonna figure things out.”


	9. Chapter 9

“You oughta go home, Red.”

Matt took a deep breath and nodded. “Probably. _But_  I’m not gonna leave you here. Don’t know if I could live with that, if somethin’ happened.”

Frank hummed. “Don’t seem like much _can_  happen to me these days.”

“Maybe not. But still. I always said I just wanted to help you, right? Wouldn’t be much for a man of my word if I left now.”

“Maybe not.”

They had wheeled another bed into the room, for Matt. Someone had lent the guy some clothes too. He shuffled around the room dressed in soft sweatpants and a hoodie, and fluffy socks.

Frank stared down at the notebook laid out on the small table before him. Matt had wheeled it over for him. Frank watched the pages and held a pen tightly.

He had all these memories that weren’t his. Grady and Joe and the crusader who’s name he had yet to recall, and even more people were popping into his head. With each of these people, he could swear that they were somehow _him._  That he had been those people.

He tried to write down any names and places and addresses he remembered. With those, they at least had somewhere to start looking for an explanation. Maybe one of these people were still alive, and could tell him what was happening. Maybe, if they were his past names, they would lead to…

Fuck, Frank had no clue what he was doing. This was a fucking mess and he hated it and he wanted it all to go back to the way it had been. He wished he wasn’t like this, because all it had done was make even more of a mess of his already shitty mess of a life. God, this sucked.

Screw it all, he needed to get some sleep.

He shut his notebook and set the pen aside, then tucked himself in for the night.

He listened to Matt aimlessly shuffle around the room for a while, pacing restlessly. The man mumbled to himself now and then, too. Probably trying to make sense of things. Hell, Frank was still trying to do that too.

Nothing made sense anymore. The whole world seemed like a dream. Was any of it real? Was Frank already someone else, just going through their memories of their past life as Frank? How old was Frank _really?_  He didn’t believe in any of that reincarnation bullshit, but was that what all of this was? But if it _was_  all some kind of reincarnation shit, how come he couldn’t die? He couldn’t be reincarnated if he didn’t die, right? He’d _have to_  die to _be able_  to be reincarnated, yeah?

Frank had never been so fucking confused in his life. Or in _this_  life, anyway. _God, he was just getting more and more confused the more he tried to make sense of things._

“I wonder why you started remembering now,” Matt said into the dark, still room. “I mean, why _now,_ of all times? What triggered it?”

Frank sighed. “Bullet to the head, maybe?”

“You’ve been shot in the head a good few times before this too, Frank,” Matt reminded. “So if it was that, then why didn’t you remember any of _those_  times? Why this specific time, when you shot _yourself?”_

“I dunno. Maybe that’s it? Universe playin’ a sick joke on me? When I finally _wanna_  die, _I can’t.”_

There was quiet for a few charged moments.

“And did you? _Want_  to die?”

The marine let out a deep breath. He rolled over in his bed, facing away from Matt.

“Figured…if I died, I died. Guess I wouldn’t’ve minded too much if I did. Was probably the only way any of my shit would’a ended anyway. Honestly, I don’t even blame the Scooby Gang for shootin’ me. All tryin’ to do the right thing. Guess they figured the right thing was me dyin’, instead’a all the criminal assholes I’ll probably be killin’ in the future. Take all ‘em down the legal way instead. Not that I got _any_  fuckin’ faith in that shit…”

They were quiet again.

Frank didn’t mind it. He tried to sleep. Matt was probably doing the same. He hoped they could both get some rest; hopefully have some energy to get back to figuring shit out, in the morning.

“I’m glad you didn’t die, Frank.”


	10. Chapter 10

Breakfast was…awkward.

He and Matt sat around the table with the Avengers, quiet while they all chatted. Despite the Avengers all doing their best to appear unbothered, Frank could tell they didn’t like any of this, sharing their table with him and Matt.

Frank tried to focus on his notebook. More and more was coming back to him but things were still a mess; everything was out of order, parts were missing, details were blurry, it was all just random flashes, bursts of images and emotions, voices talking over his head.

His hand moved the pen over the pages almost unconsciously. It didn’t feel like he was controlling it. Some subconscious part of him was in control of it, for the moment, scribbling out whatever popped up.

“The AI, it’s called Friday, right?” Frank asked into the room.

“Yeah, that’s her name,” Stark said, sitting close-by enough to have heard the question. “Why?”

“She can look stuff up, right?”

“Yeah, just ask her a question.”

“Friday, what does _bet kenesset_  mean?”

 _“Bet kenesset_  is a Hebrew term used mainly by Israeli Jews, to refer to a synagogue,” Friday the AI informed swiftly. “Translated, the term means _house of assembly.”_

Frank hummed. A synagogue? That made sense, he remembered that. Remembered sitting in the pews, listening as they read the Torah.

“Look up this adress for me, Friday. _Via Francisco 312, Forlì, Italy,”_  he said, reading out the address he had scribbled under the words _bet kenesset._  “What’s there?”

Frank could already guess.

Friday was silent for a second as she computed the question.

 _“Via Francisco 312_  is the address of a small synagogue in the city of Forlì, Italy. According to the city’s website, it was commissioned by the city in 1721 due to an influx of Jewish citizens. It was then completed in 1730. In 1986, it was listed as a cultural landmark but is, sadly, frequented by a dwindling number of worshiper. Though, thanks to its status as a landmark, it will remain open to the public, even if only a tourist attraction. The currently presiding Rabbi is Mario Vilente. Would you like me to send you his listed contact information?”

“No. No, that’s okay. Thanks,” Frank said. “We need to go there, Matt. There’s something there. I dunno _what_  but…I can feel it.”

Matt hummed as he sipped his coffee. “What _do_  you remember? About the time you spent there, I mean.”

“I was… _Ilan._  My- My parents were from Israel. They immigrated to Italy when… When my father was hired to design a synagogue in Forlì.”

“So your father, _Ilan’s_  father, he designed this synagogue?” Matt asked.

“I… I guess,” Frank said hesitantly, staring at the address. “I need to go there. I need to go there _now._  How soon can we leave?”

“You’re not going anywhere, Castle,” Rogers said sternly.

Frank closed the notebook. He clasped his hands on the table and leaned in towards Rogers.

“Whatcha gonn’ do to stop me? Kill me? Oh, no, wait, my bad, the lady over there,” he said, pointing to the woman he now knew was named Natasha. “-already gave it her best shot. Literally.”

Rogers pursed his lips tightly.

“Captain,” Matt interjected. “I told you both once already. Let’s call the pissing contest a draw, okay? Let’s be _reasonable_  instead. We all wanna figure out what’s going on here, how any of this is possible. _So,_  let’s work together.”

The Captain inhaled a steeling breath.

“Fine,” he conceded. “Friday, call and get the private jet prepped. Find us an airstrip as close to Forlì as possible. We’ll pack up and head out after breakfast. Is _that_  good enough for ya, Castle?”

Frank shrugged. “I’d rather leave now but hey, if the old man needs some time to take his meds and get his diaper changed, who am I to stand in his way?”

He got up, grabbed his notebook and his cup of coffee, then headed back to his room in the medical wing of the Complex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck knows when this fic will be finished and fuck knows how many chapters therell be
> 
> (Ilan is based on the guest character Jon played on The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, season four, episode seven)


	11. Chapter 11

The flight was a goddamn agony. Frank hated it because it took so goddamn long, even if a private jet shortened the trip good amount. He couldn't sit still. He was too tense. He paced. The plane was a spacious thing. Plenty of room for his pacing.

He was just nervous.

What would they find when they got there? Would they even find anything? Maybe he was wrong, maybe there wasn't anything to find. Maybe this memory was wrong. Maybe one of his past selves had done this same journey and already taken what had been there. The more questions he asked, the less answers there seemed to be.

Everyone was getting annoyed with him, he knew that. His restless pacing was getting on their nerves and damn if it wasn't getting on his nerves too. But he couldn't sit still either. If he did, he'd explode. He'd go crazy, he'd lose his mind.

"Frank," Matt said as Frank once again rounded the back end of the cabin, where the blind man was sitting. "Come sit down."

Frank stopped, instead weighing from foot to foot, picking at his fingers, and shook his head.

 _"Please._ Pacing isn't helping. It's not getting us there any faster," Matt reminded.

The marine let out a sigh. He slumped into the big fancy seat next to Matt's equally fancy seat.

"I know," he admitted. "I know, I just... I'm just fuckin' _frustrated,_ y'know! Wish I could just snap my fingers and _be there,_ 'cause...there's somethin' there, Red, I know it. I dunno how, I just do. Know it in my goddamn soul."

He ran his hands over his face as he sighed again.

"And I just- I wanna find it and figure shit out, but this damn flights takin' for-fuckin'-ever."

Matt nodded solemnly along. "I understand. It's frustrating. I get it. Believe me, I do. But thinking too much about it is just gonna get you more and more upset. So let's just... Um, have you remembered anything more? About Ilan?"

Once again, Frank sighed. _But_ he appreciated that Matt was trying to help, so he went along with it.

"Yeah. Yeah, guess so. Uh... His dad was teachin' him how to be an architect. Then, um, Ilan was helpin' build the synagogue and he was at the top of the scaffolding. And...he fell. Broke almost every bone in his body, but...he survived. That's when he started figurin' things out too. Y'know, what he was? I am? We are? Who fuckin' knows?"

Fuck, it made his head hurt just thinking about it.

But Matt just smiled.

"He seems a lot like you. Stubborn as hell," he said. "Y'know, I think you'd fit as an Ilan!"

Frank scoffed. "Maybe in a previous life."

At that, Matt groaned, rolling his eyes with his whole body. "Uch, no, God, really?"

"Hey, ain't my fault you were wide open for it!"

Matt let out a laugh, another smile filling and lighting up his face.

Frank leaned back in his seat. He tried to get comfortable.

"Tree," he said. "Ilan. It means tree."

"Well, now you _really_ fit as an Ilan," Matt decided.

Frank's brows furrowed with confusion. "What's that mean?"

Matt leaned back. He shrugged, still smiling. "I dunno, you're just... Strong. Resilient. Won't fold for just anything. Just like a tree. And even if a storm blows you over, it won't take your roots. You'll just grow right back up, just as strong as last time."

Frank had to hazard a smile. That was...a nice sentiment.

Maybe he was like an old tree. The end of every life was like the storm knocking him down. The roots remained and he just started over again. Soon enough, he always grew his leaves and his memories back.

He fell asleep still thinking about that, and didn't wake up until they were on the ground in Italy.


	12. Chapter 12

To Frank’s dismay, it was almost midnight when they landed, _which meant,_  he still had to wait a few hours before they could get to their final destination.

It was _beyond_  aggravating.

He and Matt were put to share a room, with the Avengers that came along surrounding their room with their own to keep them boxed in. Frank tried to do what Matt had advised during their flight; get distracted.

First, he focused on unpacking his bag somewhat. Set his clothes aside on the chair in the corner of the room. Put his notebook on the nightstand. Check and double check his first aid kit, because you never know when someone’s going to shoot you _(lookin’ at you, Natasha)._  His fingers itched because he didn’t have a gun; they had _confiscated_  them once he got to the Complex. He felt exposed without a weapon.

Then he focused on taking a shower, and tried to stretch it out, waste as much time as he could on it. Took his sweet time getting the water just the way he liked it. Spent a good few minutes sorting through all the products, compliments of the hotel, and pick out which ones sounded best. He scrubbed himself all over until his skin started to ache.

He dressed in just his boxers and a t-shirt before leaving the bathroom.

Matt was walking around the room with the room phone to his ear, the cord stretching after him.

“Yeah, I know I should’ve called but things…sorta happened really fast,” he said into the phone.

Frank ducked under the cord to get to his bed, where he laid down and tried to get as comfortable as possible. He listened to Matt’s conversation.

“I know, _I’m sorry._  But I’m not alone! I’m with Frank and some of the Avengers. Yeah, they know who I am now. Doesn’t seem like they have much of an issue with _me,_  at least. Frank is another story with them, though, but I’m not even gonna get into that. No, I… I can’t say why we’re here. _It’s not my story to tell,_  okay? If it was, I’d tell you in heartbeat. You know that, Fog. But this isn’t- Maybe when we come back, Frank can tell you all about it, but…no promises. It’s his story. He decides who to share it with, not me. I’ll call you _as soon_  as we’re leaving the hotel and _again_  before we get on the plane. You’ll be the first to know when I’m back in New York. I know. I’m sorry, Fog. Really, I am. Tell Karen too, will you? Tell her she can call me whenever, and to not worry about the time difference. I’ll answer, no matter the hour here. I promise.”

He said a short goodbye, laced with a few more apologies, before hanging up the phone and collapsing face first onto the second bed in the room.

“Trouble in paradise, huh?” Frank said, trying to sound casual about it.

Matt groaned into the covers. After a second, he rolled over onto his back, sighing into the room.

“No, not really. Just…he’s my friend. He worries. And I appreciate it, I do, but…it can feel overbearing sometimes,” the blind man admitted lowly. “With worries comes expectations. Don’t know if I can _meet_  those expectations. I’ve disappointed him enough to last a lifetime already. Guess I’m scared I’ll just keep disappointing him.”

Frank hummed.

“He’s your friend, not your mom. Don’t owe him nothin’, harsh as that might sound,” Frank told Matt. “You do what you gotta do. He’s gonna have to be good with that. With your whole…Daredevil thing, he can’t be your number one focus all the time, is all I’m sayin’. Sometimes your number one focus’ gotta be the shit Daredevil does. Savin’ people and all, y’know? Can’t be thinkin’ about Franklin every hour of the day, I mean. You got your own life, your own shit, to worry about. And…if he don’t like that, well, then he ain’t a very good friend, is what I think about it.”

Matt was quiet, as if thinking over what Frank had said.

“Thanks, Doctor Castle, I really appreciate the advice. How does Tuesday sound for our next session?”

Frank let out a snorting chuckle. He grabbed one of the pillows he wasn’t using and threw it at Matt. The blind man just laughed, curling up to shield himself from the assault.

 _“Shaddup,_  devil boy!” Frank said, even though he was laughing as well.

It was nice.

*

It was easier to see the city in daylight.

And…God, it made Frank feel weird. He recognized the city but at the same time, everything seemed different. A lot had changed since Ilan’s time there. He oculd almost feel Ilan in his head, rearing back at the sight of how his home had changed.

Still, Frank found his way like he’d been walking the same streets for twenty years. A lot had changed, but not everything. He lead the group. Matt was always near, tapping his cane and holding Frank’s arm. Steve, Natasha, Clint, and Sam were close behind, as well. They didn’t want Frank out of their sights for even a moment.

The synagogue was still on the outer edge of the city. Frank remembered why it had been built there, his father, _Ilan’s father_  had made certain Ilan couldn’t forget it. The city’s government had given him the land to work with, a small space far from the city’s center because _Heaven forbid they let a faith other than Catholicism have a holy place where everyone could see!_  But as some form of revenge, Ilan’s father had managed to build something beautiful, something incredible, even with the meagre sum of coin they allowed him and the minuscule land they offered up. _Serves them right._

Frank found his way there without a moment’s hesitation.

He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw it. A rush of emotion washed over him, an unintelligible mess of memories.

There was only one that was clear as day.

_Talking, laughing, talking, working hard, moving loads of bricks and mortar, helping others, shouted orders, building slowly, moving up, up, up, up so high he swore he could touch the sky, then pain for a moment and he was stumbling and then he was falling, falling down, very far, people screaming, faces shrinking away in the distance, sky so big and blue, the building so white and beautiful, hard impact, explosions of pain in his whole body, screaming, crying, so much pain, people all around, touching him, moving him, the pain got worse, dying, he was dying, had to be dying, could never survive this pain, and-_

He turned away sharply, gasping for air.

Memory. It was just amemory. It was over, in the past. It couldn’t hurt him anymore. It was just a memory. Nothing more.

Yet, he struggled to breathe. His heart raced. The world was going blurry.

Soft hands cradled his face, made him look up. Matt looked back at him with dead eyes no longer hidden by tinted glasses.

“Breathe for me, Frank. It’s okay,” Matt said, his voice calm and light. “It’s only a memory. It can’t hurt you. Focus on my voice. Breathe for me.”

Frank gripped at Matt’s wrists, clinging to him. Just breathe, just had to breathe and focus on Matt, that was all, nothing more.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“F-Frank. Cas-Castle. ‘m Frank C-Castle.”

“Good, that’s good. Can you tell me who’s here with you? Say our names?”

Frank nodded jerkily. His chest clenched tightly, his heart pounding.

“Matt. Steve. Sam. C-Clint. Nat-t-tasha.”

“Very good, that’s it, you got it. Say it again. Just keep saying our names.”

He nodded again. “Matt. S-Sam. Cl-Clint. Steve. Natasha. Matt. Clint. Steve. Natasha. Sam.”

He inhaled before every name, exhaled after every name. He found a rhythm. Based his breathing on it. Found his heart to be following it too somehow. He could control the rhythm. Slow it down as he pleased. He calmed with it. His breathing calmed, his heart calmed, his brain calmed.

The world was back in full focus, crisp and clear as ever.

“That’s it,” Matt said softly, smiling. “How do you feel?”

“Better. Better, thanks. I-I-I just… _Falling._  I was falling again. A-And I hit the ground and it hurt so bad.”

Matt nodded slowly. “But you’re not hurting anymore. It’s just a memory. It can’t hurt you. Not again. You’re okay,” he reminded ever so gently. “Is it okay if I let go of you now? I can keep holding on for a while longer if you need it. Whatever you need, Frank.”

“It’s okay. I-I’m okay.”

He wrenched his hands free from the tight grip they had had on Matt’s wrists. Matt removed his own hands just as slowly.

Frank felt torn open and raw, like a fresh wound.

But he kept breathing, and he looked to the synagogue again. It was just a memory, it couldn't hurt him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe another chapter later today????? who knows???? idk???


	13. Chapter 13

The building reached high into the sky. Its facade was a clean snow white. Its design was simple, but carried with it an elegance and a brilliance of its own. Its soft arches and curves made it feel like it was alive, just waiting to get up and walk away. Its front doors were massive, and made of some kind of dark wood. It was covered in carvings and details just as elegant as the rest of the building.

They stepped inside.

There was a calm quiet there. An airy feel of peacefulness. It wrapped around them all as soon as they entered.

According to the signs in the vestibule, listed in both Italian and English, they all removed their shoes and placed them in separate, numbered little cubbies in a tall set of shelves. Natasha took a light blue scarf from a row of hooks and wrapped it around her head, covering herself respectfully. The men each took a kippa from a box, a sign above which promised that both used kippas and used scarves were collected in a different box and cleaned at the end of every day to ensure good hygiene among visitors.

Finally, they stepped through another set of decorated doors and came to the sanctum itself.

The ceiling was high and vaulted, gilded chandeliers dangling down above them. The space was bathed in a soothing, multicolored light as the sun shone through tall, beautiful stained glass windows. The colored glass was made up in intricate patterns, seemingly travelling from one window to the next, weaving through the whole synagogue. The floors were made of polished black marble; a band of the same stone ran along the walls, some three meters up, with Hebrew letters carved into them. The letters had been gilded too, making them almost shine on their own. Frank could swear he recognized the words but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

Rows and rows of pews filled the sanctum, with a thin aisle running down the middle to the raised podium. Behind the podium was the ark. It was a tall cabinet, which looked to be made of the same kind of wood as the doors. It was dark, _almost black,_  and just as beautifully carved and decorated, some details here gilded as well. Instead of doors, the front of the cabinet was covered by a simple sheet of dark blue fabric.

There was a man sitting in one of the front pews as they entered, seeming to be simply enjoying the peacefulness there, but he rose when he heard them come in. He was an older gentleman with soft eyes and a long black beard, speckled with gray. He smiled as he saw them.

 _“Good morning, Rabbi. I hope we didn’t disturb you,”_  Frank said, speaking Italian without so much as a second thought about it.

The Rabbi approached to meet them, offering his hand to Frank. _“Not at all, my friend! I am always happy to welcome visitors."_

Frank smiled in return as they shook hands. _“Perfect! My friends here are visiting from America. They saw the synagogue from the street and thought it was absolutely incredible. They were overjoyed when they heard it was open to the public. Is it possible that you could tell us all a little about it?”_

“Certainly!” the Rabbi said, switching to accented English to address the group. “Always pleasant to have tourists take an interest. Come! Come with me! Let’s begin here at the front!”

The group followed. Frank managed to shepherd the Avengers to go first, hanging back with Matt for a moment. He grabbed Matt’s backpack and undid the zipper quickly, shoving the bag back into Matt’s hands again.

“Trip.”

“What?”

“C’mon, Red, make a distraction. I know where it is, I can get it if we just get the Rabbi out for one minute.”

Matt nodded quickly. He started walking and no more than three paces later he was tripping over his own feet, the content of his bag spilling out over the floor as he fell. Appearing to have understood where Frank’s head was at, the Avengers all rushed back to help Matt up, playing the concerned friends. Frank and the Rabbi hurried as well. Matt was eased up from the ground, all but carried by Steve.

 _“Rabbi, why don’t you help them outside, make sure he’s alright?”_  Frank suggested, sounding as concerned as he could. _“I’ll gather up his things and be there in a moment.”_

The Rabbi nodded quickly. _“Yes, yes, of course. How unfortunate that this should happen! What a shame…”_  he said then spoke to the others in English again. “Please, come outside. Let him get some fresh air. I can look closer in the light, and see if he hurt himself.”

Matt groaned and held his head, playing up his hurt. Everyone thanked the Rabbi profusely for his generous help. Frank watched as the whole group shuffled out of the sanctum together. He didn’t move until the door had shut behind them.

He grabbed Matt’s bag off the floor. He gathered up the spilled things, some hastily packed clothes and toiletries, and shoved it all haphazardly back into the pack.

Then, he headed for the ark.

As soon as he laid eyes on it, he remembered in vivid detail. He remembered helping the woodworker make it, he remembered already knowing of his immortality and briefly of his past lives, he remembered his decision to try and help his future selves.

He dragged the ark away from the wall it was placed up against, very careful not to jostle it too much or cause it any damage. Its back panel was a simple smooth piece of lacquered wood. He ran his fingers along the cabinets underside, near the floor. He had hidden it there.

One night after the woodworker had finished building it, Ilan had made changes imperceptible to those who didn’t know they were there. He had removed the back panel, then he had shortened the shelves inside the cabinet, then replaced the panel again, which meant it was then close to an inch away from its original position. With another panel taking its place, there was a perfect hidden compartment that no one but Ilan knew existed.

_Click!_

He found it. He found it! The locking mechanism! He had found the tiny little switch hidden on the cabinets underside and undone the latch that kept the false panel in place. The panel began to tip towards him, falling out of its place. Frank caught it quickly. He lifted it gently away and set it down to the side.

He was surprised.

There were several manila envelopes taped to the second panel. What was all this? It couldn’t have been Ilan that put _those_  there, right?

Fuck it, there was no time to think too much about it right now!

He pealed back the strips of tape one by one, getting each envelope free. He packed them all into Matt’s bag, then simply put the false panel back, locked it in place, and moved the ark back to its original spot.

He did feel a little awful for mishandling the ark like that, but…it didn’t feel like he had much of a choice in the matter.

Frank hurried out to rejoin the group.

At least he had something to work with now. Something that might tell him what all of this was.

There was hope for him yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to take a moment to say that I did my best to be respectful of the Jewish faith and people, but if any Jewish person out there feels that what I have written is insensitive towards their faith, please dont hesitate to tell me! Like I said, I tried to be respectful, but good intentions dont always lead to good results, I figure. If you let me know where I have misstepped, I will do my best to correct my mistake/s! The last thing I wanted with this was to offend anyone, anywhere! My sincerest apologies if I happened to do so anyway <3 <3
> 
> (and a big thank you to preserumping and lillaby for giving me some awesome help with things!) <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dis chapter for u, kolette <3

The envelopes were burning a hole in his back the whole way to the hotel. He refused to give the bag back to Matt. There was _no way in hell_  Frank was letting _anyone_  else get their hands on the envelopes. Not until he had looked through every single thing hidden inside.

On his insistence, they took a cab as soon as they found one big enough to fit them all. He wanted to be behind closed doors as soon as possible.

He could barely breathe until they were back in the hotel room.

“Hey, help me look at my head,” Matt said, shrugging out of his jacket and toeing out of his shoes. “The Rabbi said it might need stitches.”

Frank wanted to tell him to figure it out on his own. He knew how to stitch up a cut. Frank had to look at what he’d found.

But… It _was_  Frank’s fault that Matt got hurt. And Matt had been nothing but helpful through this whole mess. It wouldn’t be right if Frank didn’t help him out in return.

Frank reluctantly put the bag down and removed his own jacket. He grabbed his first aid kit, then followed Matt into the bathroom.

Matt sat down on the closed toilet. Frank opened the kit and leaned in to inspect Matt’s head. It was a small cut, barely more than a knick, just above his left eyebrow. It was probably his glasses that did it, when he hit the ground. Must have snagged his skin, put just a little tear in it.

“Oughta be good without stitches, honestly,” Frank said. “Put one’a these butterfly closures on and it’ll be good. Just gotta clean it up first.”

Matt nodded. Frank doused a cotton swab in disinfectant. He held Matt’s had still with one hand, fingers tangling in his hair. Matt didn’t make a noise at the sting of disinfectant, only biting his lip and sucking in a sharp breath. Frank dabbed at the cut gently. He swabbed up the few drops of blood that had dried into Matt’s eyebrow. With his hand cradling Matt’s face, he angled his head towards the light. He was careful when he applied the butterfly, which would keep the knick closed until it healed.

“There ya go,” he said. “Be as good as new in a couple days.”

Matt scoffed as Frank started packing the kit together. “Doubt it.”

Frank nodded. “Uh… Thanks for, y’know, trustin’ me. Back there, at the synagogue. Backin’ my play and all,” he said.

The clasps on the kit clacked shut. He leaned on the sink.

Matt smiled and shrugged. “You seemed confident. I believed in that.”

“And…uh, thanks. For everythin’ else. Wouldn’t’a gotten this far without ya. Without your help.”

Matt still just smiled up at him from where he sat. He seemed so happy. And confident. It was contagious. Frank felt certain that they’d figure things out. How could he fail, with Matt to back his plays?

There was…an unexpected flicker of _affection_  in Frank’s chest. He cared about Matt. He wanted to protect Matt. And be with Matt. He hadn’t felt like this for Matt before. It was something new, like seeing him in a new light. He was so kind and helpful, and wanted nothing but good for others; even for Frank, who truly didn’t deserve it. Still, he had been only helpful. Frank had kicked and screamed and told him to stay away, but Matt was too good for it, too good to give up on Frank, even if that _was_  what Frank deserved. Matt was good. He was a good person. He was a lone good thing in a shitty world.

Frank leaned down.

Matt’s lips were soft against his, for a lonely moment.

He pulled back quickly again. _Why did he do that? That was so stupid, he shouldn’t have done that!_  Matt looked…shocked. Stunned. Rightfully so, probably.

“I-I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’a done that,” Frank said lowly, swiftly gathering up his kit and heading for the door. “That was wrong of me, sorry, forget it.”

The bathroom door shut behind him. He tossed the kit down at his duffle. He wondered if he could leave and take a walk, give Matt a chance to switch rooms with someone, Matt would probably want that, probably wouldn’t want to share with Frank anymore, too awkward. He grabbed his jacket.

Matt appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Frank by the arm, made him turn around.

Then Matt was kissing him.

Matt’s hands cradled Frank’s face gently again. Frank found his hands drawn to Matt’s waist, holding him close.

It only lasted a moment before they parted, hands still glued to each other’s bodies.

“I-…”

Frank wasn’t sure what he was trying to say. He was honestly completely speechless.

 _“I’m_  not sorry,” Matt told him.

Frank nodded, swallowing dryly. There was nothing to be sorry for. That was, wow, that was really nice.

Matt leaned in again, thank God. His lips were so soft and his whole body seemed to melt against Frank, hanging onto him for dear life. Matt tugged at Frank’s half-on jacket. Frank hummed and followed his lead, stumbling around each other’s feet. Then they were falling onto the closest bed and Frank was on top of Matt and Matt was pulling him even closer and their bodies were touching all over and wow, Matt felt nice like this.

Frank tore his hands away from Matt. He shrugged his jacket back off, tossing it blindly away, before his hands were all but magnetically drawn back to Matt. Fuck, Matt was kissing down Frank’s neck, his fingers were in Frank’s hair, and he moaned softly as Frank tried to move and their bodies grinded together.

 _“Shit,”_  Frank swore as Matt nipped at his ear.

He could feel Matt’s cock getting hard, rubbing against Frank’s thigh and his own cock, and shit, Frank was hard as hell too. Frank managed to get his hands in between their bodies; he felt over Matt’s solid chest, down his softer tummy, to his belt and bumbled with the buckle and the button and zipper. Matt moaned softly in his ear, as Frank’s hand slipped down the front of his slacks finally. Fuck, his dick felt so fucking good in Frank’s hand. Matt just moaned again, clawing at Frank’s scalp and pulling on his hair.

“God, fuck, yes,” Matt whispered, then changed his mind. “Shit, wait, no, stop, this- _Fuck.”_

Frank dragged himself away from Matt, pulling his hand back out of his slacks, looking down at Matt, breathless.

“What’s up, you okay? What’s wrong?”

Matt’s hands were on Frank’s chest. Frank’s hands sank into the covers as he held himself up. Matt nodded.

“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m okay,” he said. “I just- Um, I’m not-… I wanna. Do this. With you, right now. But- I’m just not, y’know, _prepared?”_

Frank’s brows furrowed, his breathing still laboured. “So? I-I-I mean, it’s a hotel, probably lube an’ condoms all over the place,” he said.

Matt nodded again. He swallowed dryly. “No, no, I know, that’s not what I mean,” he said. “I mean, I’m not a woman, kinda need to prep a lil’ bit _before_  the actual fucking, y’know?”

What?

“Oh? _Oh!”_  Frank let out as he understood what Matt meant. “Yeah, okay, I mean, sure, I-I-I get it. D’you- I mean… D’you wanna stop? Or, like, do other stuff? Like…hand stuff? Mouth stuff? Or just stop? ‘Cause, I mean, whatever you want, up to you, I’d never- y’know, I’d never- y’know, if you didn’t wanna.”

Matt nodded a third time. “O-Other stuff is good, let’s do other stuff.”

Frank nodded too, as Matt pulled him in again. They rolled over; Matt sat up, straddling Frank’s body. He fumbled with his slacks. He pushed them down his thighs, and got his cock out. _Fuck,_  it was pretty, nice and long and pink, and blushing just like his face, and he jerked himself quick and rough his hand, rutting against the hard bulge in Frank’s jeans.

Frank groaned, fuck, that was good. He undid his jeans, shimmying them down his legs as much as he could, cock coming free. He spat into his hand. Matt moaned when Frank replaced his hand with his own, stroking Matt’s cock fast and hard like he’d been doing it. Matt spat into his own hand and wrapped it around Frank’s cock. He leaned in. They kissed again, jerking each other off as they groaned into each other’s lips. Frank groped at Matt’s ass, making him moan at that too, as Matt’s free hand felt over Frank’s hard chest.

“’M gonna-” Matt grunted between laboured breaths. _“Fuck,_  I’m gonna-”

Frank nodded, nipping at Matt’s lips, squeezing his cock just a little tighter, jerking him just a little faster.

God, this was _good._


	15. Chapter 15

Frank sat on his bed. Matt was out; he’d gone with a few of the others to pick up lunch for everyone. Frank tried not to think too much about what happened between him and Matt. They hadn’t exactly had time to _talk_  before Clint was knocking on their door. Frank had hidden in the bathroom with his jizz covered t-shirt, while Matt, who had managed to remain spotless, answered the door. He had called out to Frank, let him know they were going out. Frank hadn’t left the bathroom until he was sure he heard the door lock again.

And now here he was, with what he was here for.

Four manila envelopes, still with strips of electrical tape stuck to them.

He studied them closely. They had been sealed, then opened and resealed with tape at least once. There was no writing on the outside, no distinguishing marks or anything else noteworthy. They were all of varying weights, but even the heaviest couldn’t weight more than a pound. It felt like there was some kind of _book_  in the heaviest envelope. The others seemed to contain a mix of items, going solely by initial his judging of them.

He opened the heavy one first. Hm, he was right, it was a book. It looked old; a leather bound thing, which had obviously seen some wear and tear. Other papers had been shoved in among the pages here and there. Frank opened the book to the first page.

Hebrew? He opened it from the other side, to read it properly, from right to left.

_Ilan Bashevis_

_Journal for the year of 1728_

Frank stared. That was… That was written in Hebrew. And he could read it. How could he read it? He’d never been able to read Hebrew before?! He sighed. Fuck, he was beyond questioning any of this shit anymore, he just wanted to know what the fuck was happening.

So he could read Hebrew? Who fucking cares, the better question was how the fuck did he survive a point blank bullet to the head? One of these things was less shocking and confusing than the other.

He started reading.

Ilan talked about missing home; Israel. He liked Forlì, sure, but he missed everyone back home. All his friends. The girl he thought he was going to marry. But he had had to come with his parents to Italy all those years ago. He couldn’t let them go alone. It wouldn’t be right of him. And his father needed Ilan’s help to build the synagogue, and his mother needed his help with his siblings.

He talked about working at the build site, and helping the woodworkers make the pews and the ark and so on, and visiting the sculptor daily to see how progress on the marble carving was going, then going to the artist to see the stained glass windows as they were being made, drop by at home to help his mother get his siblings to sit down and eat then bathe them and put them to bed, then studying with his father. He was busy and a little stressed, but he seemed _happy_  with his life as it was.

Then…there was a big skip in the dates. Ilan had been careful about noting the date each day he wrote in his journal, but then there was suddenly _nothing_  for some months. It skipped from March to August, then picked up again.

 _I can’t believe I’m alive,_  Ilan wrote in his first entry of August. _I was at the building sit, working on top of the scaffolds. They were moving the temporary wooden beams. One of them hit me, by accident. I think it hit me right in the back of the head. I stumbled. Then I fell. I fell from the top. They carried me to a doctor as quickly as they could. The doctor said many of my bones had been broken, that he was shocked that I had survived even just the fall. That he’d be even more shocked if I managed to recover. But here I am. Healed like it never happened._

He was just as confused as Frank had been. He couldn’t understand how he had survived something that should’ve killed him. Apparently, everyone around him took it as a sign from God that Ilan had survived, that it hadn’t been his time and God had reached down to save him Himself. Ilan said that despite his faith in God, he didn’t think that that was the case. He couldn’t describe it, but he could _feel_ that this was not God’s work. At least not in the way everyone thought it was. This was something else. He didn’t know _what,_  but he knew it wasn’t God.

Frank kept reading.

Ilan started remembering. He had flashes of past lives, just like Frank did. His head ached and his nose bled, and his family told him that he acted like a completely different person for a minute, speaking a different language, seeming confused and lost and angry that no one could understand him. He wrote about all the things he remembered, as soon as it came to him.

Once, they were a gladiator the Romans called Sevinus. Another time he was Greek goat herder. At one point, he was a Gallic warrior. Then somewhere along the way, he was a middle-eastern man who was sold as a slave and brought to China. A merchant from Spain. French nobility. A viking? An Aztec farmer. A Beduin man travelling through the Sahara. A beggar, a prince, a king, a knight, a soldier, a farmer, a slave, a husband, a father, a brother, a friend, a hermit, a cast-out.

He had been everything there was to be.

Ilan ended the journal by explaining how he was going to hide it in the ark, in the synagogue. He explained how he hoped this retelling of what _he_  remembered so far would help his future selves at some point. He wished his future selves good luck.

The papers slipped into the journal here and there were from later lives, those coming after Ilan. They were all in the same handwriting, Frank’s handwriting, but there were no name of the author, whatever he had been named in the life in which he wrote these. Hm, interesting, they were more detailed tellings of lives Ilan had mentioned. This later life had remembered them more clearly and written it all down.

Frank read them closely. He wanted to know every little detail there was to know.

He placed them all gently back where he took them from once he finished, setting the journal down to the side.

He took a deep breath. This was just…a lot. He was glad to have something to stand on, something to tell him what was happening, who he really was, but at the same time, it was just…too much, almost. There were _millennia_  of history here. He was _millennia_  old! _Plural! He was several millennia old! Thousands of years old!_  How? Just _how?_ How was it possible?

Frank rubbed at his eyes and took a deep breath.

He opened the remaining envelopes and removed the content from each, piling it all up on top of it own separate envelope, just to keep some order to things.

One envelope contained…things. Random things, little knick-knacks, trinkets, keepsakes. A pen, a ring, a cross on a necklace, a pair of glasses, a box of matches, a lighter, an earring, a lock of blonde hair tied with a red bow. Drawings. Photos. They were photos of him.

There was one with him and a woman, and two young boys, and they were sitting on the steps up to a small house. On the back, it was written in pen _Sam and Elsa, with sons George and Benjamin, 1989._  Holy shit… 1989? that was only thirty years ago. That meant… Those people could still be alive. The boys looked to be maybe ten and twelve, roughly? They’d only be in their forties by now. The woman, Elsa, she’d be older too of course, but she could have been alive.

Did they remember him? What did they think happened to their father, Sam? Did they think he left them? Maybe they thought he died? Frank would have to call Stark, get him to look these people up. Frank had to know. He didn’t care if it ended up hurting, _he had to know._

He had to put all those things back in the envelope and close it, and put it away out of sight. He couldn’t look at it. It just…thinking about all those lives, all the people he knew and loved and cared about in those lives. Did they all think he left them without a word? That he abandoned them? Did they spend the rest of their lives wondering about him? About where he went, why he did it, what he was doing?

Frank had to wipe his cheeks and dry his eyes, and just breathe for a moment.

The remaining two envelopes contained only stacks of papers. Written down memories, maps tracking their lives, attempts to retrace his history, _desperate attempts to just figure out why he was like this and who he really was._  There were more drawings; the faces of friends he had had, his families, his parents, his homes, anything he could remember in the present life and wanted to remember in a future life.

He unfolded the maps, laid them all out side by side. The world map was marked up with red ink, a dot for every place he could remember spending a life. And God…almost the whole map was red. He’d been everywhere there was to be, everywhere a life could be built, a family made.

So many people… He’d left so many people behind.

He tried to focus. He blinked away the tears and started reading through the papers that came along with the maps. It was all the same as before; shreds of memories, the smallest bits of information, names, places, dates, research stretching back God knows how long.

But…there were no answers to his questions. He’d obviously been asking the same questions for _at least_  two millennia; who was he really, what was his name, where was he from, why was he like this, who did this to him, could he take it away, could he ever really die, why did his lives start over the way they did, why did he never remember anything, what made him _start_ remembering, what happened to his friends and family when his new life started?

He read through the research he had amounted over these two millennia, and he read it again, and again, and again, but no matter how close he tried to look, how hard he tried to piece anything together, _there were no answers._

There were no answers. He knew nothing. After _two millennia_  of the same cycle, two millennia of research, of searching for answers, he knew _nothing._

He knew nothing, and it was like a black hole had been placed in his chest.

He was _empty._  A vacuum of space. There was _nothing_  inside him. All he could feel was this roaring emptiness, a burning loneliness.

_He wished he could just die._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :(


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS SELF-HARM, MAY BE MENTIONED IN FUTURE CHAPTERS
> 
> PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION

Frank was still in the bathroom when Matt got back. It seemed like he was sitting in the empty bathtub, with a whole slew of tiny bottles of booze from the mini-bar.

That was…a little weird.

Matt shuffled over to the unused desk in the corner of the small room and set the boxes of take-out down there. He removed his jacket and folded his cane together. He stepped over to the bathroom door and knocked.

“Hey, Frank,” he said. “Got some food. Wasn’t sure what you’d want so I just chanced it on some pasta with red pesto and cheese. It smelled great so I figured you’d probably like it.”

There came no answer. He listened as the cap on another little bottle was unscrewed. Frank drank the whole thing at once, not that that was much of an achievement given their diminutive size. But going by the pyramid of bottles growing up the wall starting at the tub’s rim, Frank had been doing that for a good while.

Matt grabbed the knob and tried to open the door.

Shit, _locked._

He knocked again, more insistently this time.

“Frank, please open the door,” he said. “I can tell you’re drinking, and have been for a while, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea. If you don’t open the door for me, I’ll have to break it down.”

Frank seemed to be ignoring him. He sniveled, the salt of tears made the air distasteful. Another bottle opened. A sharp metal edge tapped against the porcelain of the tub.

Oh, no, what was this?

Matt leaned in, listening closer.

Frank had something in his hand. Something small and thin, but _sharp._  The edge tapped the porcelain again. Then it was touching skin. Frank hissed.

_Fuck, Frank was fucking cutting himself with a razor blade._

“Frank! Open the door, Frank!” Matt shouted, pounding on the door with his fist.

The door to their room was thrown open behind him. The Avengers flooded in, having heard the noise.

”What’ goin’ on?!” Steve asked.

Matt stepped back from the door quickly. “Frank’s in there! He’s hurting himself!”

 _“Shit!”_  someone swore, and Matt was in agreement.

Steve didn’t hesitate to step up and swiftly kick the bathroom door down, easily breaking it off its hinges. Matt shoved past him then, running into the bathroom and falling to his knees beside the tub. He grabbed Frank by the wrists. He could feel the blood staining his fingers already.

Frank held the razor tight in his left hand, his right forearm cut to hell and back and _pouring_  blood.

He tried to pull his hands out of Matt’s, but Matt refused, holding onto him tightly.

 _“Frank!_  Frank, listen to me!” he said sharply. “Let me help you, Frank. Give me the razor. Someone gimme a towel!”

Frank shook his head morosely, still clinging to the razor. Someone kneeled next to the tub with Matt. They grabbed Frank’s right arm, wrapping it tightly in a towel, putting pressure on the cuts and soaking up the blood.

“Don’t matter…” Frank said, almost whimpering, through the tears. “Gone in a secon’ anyway…”

“Frank, please give me the razor,” Matt pleaded.

He held on tightly to Frank’s left wrist, and the razor with the other hand, hoping to pry it from Frank’s grip if Frank wouldn’t let go willingly.

“It’s okay, Frank. You’re okay,” he reminded for what seemed like the millionth time. “I got you, Frank. I’m right here. You can let go of the razor.”

Matt stifled a relieved breath when Frank finally _did_  let go of it. Matt took it away quickly and offered it out to the others. Someone took it and disposed of it.

With Steve’s help, Frank was lifted out of the tub. He could barely walk. He didn’t seem _drunk,_  but more…too tired to carry himself. They sat him down on the closest bed and he simply fell back and laid down, not bothering to hold himself up. Matt sat on the bed, taking Frank’s head to rest in his lap. No one bothered to question it.

Someone found the first aid kit. They gently unwrapped the bloodied towel to look at the cuts. There came only surprised gasps, though.

His arm was… It was _fine._  Not a scratch in sight. Not even a scar, as far as Matt could tell. The skin had closed up perfectly and left no trace of any injury.

“Told ya…” Frank muttered. “Gone in a secon’…”

Matt pet the man’s head gently. His fingers ran through Frank’s short, messy hair.

_God, this was a mess…_


	17. Chapter 17

They were flying back to New York.

Frank sat in the far back again, with his envelopes. Matt sat beside him. The blind man seemed disinclined to leaving Frank alone anymore. He was afraid Frank would hurt himself. For which, Frank didn’t exactly blame him. Frank would probably be feeling the same way if their places had been reversed.

He wasn’t planning on doing any of that again, though. He wasn’t really sure _why_  he’d done it in the first place. It was just… After reading all that stuff, realizing how many times he had lived and died and how many people he had left behind… His soul just _hurt._  Everything inside him had ached so horribly. He had just needed to let it out, get the pain out of his body and into the world and make it go away. He hadn’t had his own knives on him so he went looking for something else to use, and the razors had just been _there,_  right there in the bathroom cabinet. The booze helped ease the pain, too.

“What’re we gonna do when we get back?” Matt asked softly.

Frank shrugged. He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.

He grabbed one of the envelopes, the one filled with all sorts of bits and bobs, and poured the items out of the table in front of him. He hadn’t looked through them very closely before. Might as well do it now, when he had the time to waste.

He didn’t look at the photos. Couldn’t take more of that right now. He turned them all face down and slid them back in the envelope. Could look at those when he was better in the head, he figured.

The glasses had black frames, the glass scratched and dirty. Frank put them on. Hm, the world seemed a little blurrier with them on, why had he needed those? Maybe they weren’t his, then. Maybe they had belonged to someone he had been close with. He wished he remembered who had owned them.

The lighter was an old Zippo, polished brass. He clicked it a few times but there cam nothing but sparks. There was an emblem engraved on one side. _H-L._  Someone’s initials, maybe? His, or someone elses? He couldn’t say for sure.

He handled the blonde lock of hair very gently. The red bow was still neat, even after God knows how long of being crammed in that envelope. He held the hair to his nose. It smelled like…roses.

A flash of a memory passed through his mind. _Walking down a dirt road, grass fields on either sides, a small, warm hand in his. A woman with long, blonde hair walked beside him. He pulled her closer and wrapped his arm around her, leaning in to kiss her head. Her hair smelled like roses. She laughed and shoved him away in a playful way. He laughed too. It felt like they were happy._

He picked up the ring. He’d never seen a ring like that before. It was made to sit on two fingers, instead of on. The metal was mildly golden in color, but it wasn’t gold. Maybe brass, or copper? No, that didn’t seem right. A thin metal plate held the two rings together, something like cogs raised out of the plate as decoration.

He put the ring on his right hand. It fit perfectly onto his index- and middle-finger. There was a _weight_  to it. It felt _heavy_  when it came to sit on his hand.

He needed to go. There was somewhere he needed to be. He couldn’t stay here. He pushed past Matt into the aisle, beginning to pace.

 _“Kamar-Taj!”_  he said. “Kamar-Taj, Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One, she can tell me, _she knows me!_ The Ancient One! She’ll know me, I know she will, she knows me, Kamar-Taj!”

Someone grabbed his arm, made him stop and turn, he looked around with wild eyes. He couldn’t stop, he needed to go to Kamar-Taj!

“Frank, take a breath, calm down,” Matt said gently. “Slow down. Just…take it easy, and explain what you’re talking about. We’ll help. We just need to know what you need.”

“Kathmandu,” he told Matt. “She’s in Kathmandu, in Kamar-Taj. I- I need to go there.”

He pulled his arm out of Matt’s grip. He raised his hand, pointing with the fingers clad in the golden ring. He traced a circle in the air with his other hand.

Sparks flew again. They burst into existence, out of nowhere. They burned a blazing path in the air; a wide circle, the size of a man.

Another world was within the circle. It wasn’t the aisle of the plane like it should have been. It was a stone square, the grounds of a temple. He knew that place.

Frank stepped through the blazing circle.

_“Frank!”_

They were all screaming. Matt and everyone else. Telling him to stop…

He felt Matt grab him again.

They fell onto the hard stones.

The light of the burning circle flickered and died out, the screams of the Avengers silencing abruptly.

“What happened?!” Matt questioned, his voice frantic and frightened. “Where are we?! How did you do that?!”

Frank looked around. He breathed in the familiar mountain air.

_Kamar-Taj._

He was back.


	18. Chapter 18

“Frank, where are we? Who are all these people?”

Frank grabbed Matt by the wrist. He dragged the man in to stand behind him, even as they were being surrounded.

“Quiet,” Frank told him. “Stay quiet.”

 _“Who are you?”_  one of the students surrounding them questioned.

Everyone was armed, ready to defend their home.

“The Ancient One!” Frank said, eyes darting around to each of them, watching all of them all at once. “Where is she?! I need to talk to her! She’ll know me!”

 _“Surrender your sling ring, or we will take action!”_  someone else shouted. _“Submit yourself to questioning by the Master of Kamar-Taj!”_

Master? Where was the Ancient One?

They had to get out of there. He had to find the Ancient One. If she wasn’t there, she had to be in one of the Sanctums.

“Get down,” he whispered over his shoulder.

_It all happened in a split-second._

_Matt didn’t hesitate to do as he was told._

_He fell to the ground, covering his head to shield himself from whatever was coming._

_Frank inhaled a deep breath._

_He clapped his hands together as hard as he could._

_A pulse of pure energy burst out of his body._

_It moved like a shock-wave, blasting out at those who surrounded him and Matt. It hit them all like a ton of bricks, lifting them off their feet, throwing them back._

_Frank opened another portal. He grabbed Matt and dragged him through to the other side._

*

They sat in a grass field. Frank remembered this place. This was that place from the memory he had recovered on the plane; he had been there, with the blonde woman who smelled like roses. He wondered where in the world they were.

“What the hell happened?” Matt questioned. “Honestly, what the fuck? We were on the plane then we’re _in fuckin’ Nepal?_  And where the hell are we _now?!”_

“Not sure,” Frank admitted. “Been here before, but…not sure exactly where it is. ‘S the first thing that came to mind.”

He got to his feet quickly and offered his hand to Matt. The blind man took it, allowing himself to be helped up. Matt swore as his phone rang, saying Steve’s name on repeat. He fumbled to pull the phone out of his pocket and answer the call, putting it on speaker.

“Matt! Where are you?! Are you guys okay?” the soldier asked. “What happened? Where’d you go?”

“I-I dunno!” Matt said. “Nepal, I guess? And now we’re in a field somewhere? I can’t explain it. Frank seems to know what he’s doing. You know what you’re doing, Frank, right?”

Frank took the phone. “Yeah, we’re going to New York first,” he said. “Then London, then Hong Kong. I’ll go with the ring and Matt’ll come with if he wants, or I can send him back to the Complex to meet you.”

“Castle, _slow down,”_  Steve ordered. “What the hell is goin’ on? _What ring?_  What’s in London and Hong Kong?”

“I need to find the Ancient One,” was all Frank said.

He ended the call and held the phone out to Matt. The blind man took it with a sigh.

“Okay, so…” he attempted, rubbing at his eyes, while Frank waited to hear whatever Matt had to say. “This… _Ancient One._  Who is she?”

“She’s like me. She’s immortal,” Frank told him.

He remembered that much, at least. He remembered…her teaching him to wield the ring, and use magic. Learning of his own immortality, telling her about it. She had been kind to him when he told her. She had sympathized, understood his pain. She had tried to help him figure out who he was, why and how he was the way he was.

“She can tell me who I am.”

Matt’s look of confusion bled into something more serious.

 _“Okay._ If she can help you, we’ll find her,” Matt said like it was a solemn promise.

His hand came to rest on Frank’s shoulder. He tried to smile, despite the situation. Frank tried to do the same. Matt leaned in. He placed a tentative kiss on Frank’s lips. It was short, only a moment.

Frank chased after him as he pulled away. He kissed him again. It was deeper, longer, fuller. Frank could feel it in his very soul.

They smiled as they finally parted.

Frank opened another portal. They took each other’s hand and stepped through together.

*

“Um… _Hello?”_

They both turned quickly on their toes.

They stood in the middle of a library. Two men sat together in a pair of big, puffy chairs, over a game of chess set out on a small table between them. They stared at Matt and Frank with big eyes.

“Can we help you?” one of the men asked.

Frank cleared his throat dryly. Again, he pulled Matt in to stand behind him, to protect him.

“This is the New York Sanctum,” he said, though even to his own ears it sounded more like a question than a statement.

“Yes,” the other of the two men at the table said. “And you are…?”

“Frank Castle,” Frank said, pointing to himself, then pointed to Matt standing behind him. “Matt Murdock. We’re…lookin’ for the Ancient One. I gotta talk to her.”

The chess-players exchanged _a look,_  of some sort. Frank couldn’t quite interpret it. There was something there, though, he could say that much at least.

“If I can just talk to her-”

“She died,” a player interrupted sharply.

He rose from his seat, tall and proud. A deep red cloak hung around his neck, swaying to his ankles.

“Her student Kaicilius and his Zealots of Dormammu killer her,” he informed. “I am Doctor Stephen Strange, Master of the New York Sanctum. This is Wong. Perhaps we can help.”

She…died? But…how could she? She was immortal, like him. She couldn’t have died.

Frank all but collapsed.

Matt had to catch him somewhat, ease him onto the floor.

No. No, she couldn’t be dead. It just wasn’t possible! Who- _Who was going to help him now?_  Who was going to tell him who he was? Tell him where he came from, why he was like this?

“Frank, it’s okay,” Matt insisted, cradling Frank to his chest. “It’s okay, just breathe for me. It’s okay. We’ll figure things out.”

“Wong,” Strange said. “Why don’t we…make some coffee for our guests? We’ll…sit down and have a little chat.”

*

They sat all together in the library.

People had come from Kamar-Taj, seeking the intruders, making sure all the Sanctums were still safe and protected. Strange was kind enough to explain that he was handling the situation, the ‘intruders’ were no danger, come only searching for answers. After some assurance, the people from Kamar-Taj left peacefully.

Matt’s hand rested on Frank’s knee; perhaps as some kind of reassurance, or support. Frank did appreciate it. He tried to focus on drinking his coffee, though. If he thought to much about other things, he’d work himself back into a panic again.

 _“Alright!”_  Strange said, clapping his hands together as he sat down with them. “So. You’re saying that, what? He’s immortal?”

“Yes. He took a bullet to the forehead just two days ago, and here he is,” he said. “He’s got memories of past lives. It- Well, as far as I understand it, he gets dropped into a life, where he remembers his childhood and his parents and everything since he was a child, and everyone around him knows him and remembers him. But when he dies, everyone seems to forget him. Then he’s dropped in a new life and it starts again. But he doesn’t ever actually _die?_  Everyone sorta just… _forgets_  him? Is that about right, Frank?”

Frank nodded slowly.

“And sometimes he starts remembering these _past lives,_  which is how we’re here! He remembered hiding some things in Italy, when he lived there in the seventeen-hundreds, and we found this _ring_  there, and I guess that triggered the memories of this _Ancient One_  and of Kamar-Taj, and this place.”

Both Wong and Strange hummed, exchanging one of those _looks_  again.

“When did you study in Kamar-Taj?” Wong questioned.

Frank sipped his coffee. He tried to think about it. When was it? When could it have been? What did he remember from before he went to Kamar-Taj?

“1841,” he said finally. “I remember because…my mother died that year. And the year was written on her gravestone. And…she always told me to travel. So after she died, I used the money she left, what little there was, to leave home.”

Matt smiled, the sympathy painted on his face, patting Frank’s knee gently.

“What’s on your mind, Wong?” Strange asked.

Wong hummed. “We keep records of all students. Their name, when they came to us,” he explained. “Since we know the year, we only need to look in the records for that year. If we know what name he used while he was with us, perhaps we can find some mention of him in the Ancient One’s own texts.”

Both he and Wong got up out of their seats. They started moving around the library with hasty steps, searching the shelves.

“Hear that?” Matt said, sounding encouraging. “We’re gonna figure it out!”

Wong and Strange both returned some minutes later. Strange carried a big leather-bound book, carefully flipping through the old pages.

“These are the records for the 1840’s,” Wong informed as they both sat down. “Perhaps you will recognize the name you had then.”

“Here, this is 1841,” Strange said and handed over the open book.

Frank took the book. He tried to be gentle with it, since it was so old. He didn’t want to damage it, or anything.

 _1841_  was written at the top of the right page in a neat, swirling handwriting. Underneath it, the list of names started, the A’s coming first of course.

He scanned over the names, lingering for an extra moment on each one. He waited for some hint of a memory to return to him; even just the slightest shred of an emotion triggered by one of these people. The others waited quietly, tensely. Matt’s hand on his shoulder was a calming, grounding element.

The pages flipped, each page saved for a single letter even though there were only a handful of names under any of them.

He reached the D’s.

_Florent Dufour_

It was Frank’s same old scraggly handwriting.

“This one,” he said. “This is the one. Florent Dufour. My handwritin’ and everythin’…”

“Do either of you recognize it?” Matt questioned the wizards. “Did the Ancient One ever mention the name, or anything?”

Again, they shared a look.

“No,” Strange said. “But she was…a private person. She didn’t share much of herself with anyone.”

Wong nodded. “Yes, she had…many secrets,” he said lowly.

The statement felt _charged,_  loaded with meaning neither Frank nor Matt knew enough to understand.

“You go with them to Kamar-Taj,” Wong continued, speaking to Strange. “I’ll stay here in the Sanctum.”

Strange agreed, so they set off again.


	19. Chapter 19

When they came to Kamar-Taj this time, no one surrounded them. Instead, people greeted them respectfully as Strange lead the way through the temple.

Matt clung to Frank’s arm in the unfamiliar environment.

They moved through the winding halls and open chambers. It was a beautiful place. Frank could swear he caught glimpses of himself in some of the rooms they passed; memories playing tricks on him.

“Sit,” Strange ordered as they reached the closed door of a room at the end of a long hallway. “Wait here. I’ll speak to the Master and explain the situation.”

Matt and Frank sat down on the small bench beside the doors, as Strange knocked. A woman’s voice called for him to enter after a moment. He disappeared inside, the doors closing softly behind him.

“This place is… It’s pretty incredible,” Matt said lowly. “Do you remember living here? Training, studying?”

Frank leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hiding his face in his hands.

“Yeah,” he said after some moments. “It was…fulfilling. Felt like I was doin’ somethin’ good.”

Matt pet his back. “I’m glad. It sounds like you were happy here.”

“Think I was.”

Matt’s gentle hand squeezed Frank’s shoulder.

“We’re close now,” he said. “I can feel it. We’ll find something here.”

*

Strange showed them to the Ancient One’s chambers. He had to do some fancy hand-waving over the door to unlock it. Sparks formed into intricate symbols and sigils, glowing like stars in the night sky. The lock clicked and the door swayed opened.

“The Master said no one’s quite had the heart to do anything with it yet,” the wizard explained as they all entered the small room. “Losing her was hard for everyone.”

Frank could barely remember enough of her to feel the pain of loss.

The room was small and modest. He remembered very clearly, though, that the Ancient One had once insisted that she really didn’t need more than that; she had a warm place to sleep and a roof over her head, she needed nothing more. Still, the walls were covered in bookshelves. Most contained only books, of course, but here and there, she had saved other things; little keepsakes for herself. Over the bed in the corner, a spear was mounted on the wall.

Frank’s eye was drawn to the spear. He wasn’t sure why. It caught his gaze and made him stop.

It was a beautiful thing. The staff was pure silver; polished to perfection, no scratches or marks in sight, no trace of it ever having been touched by anyone’s hands. At the butt of the staff sat an eagle’s head, seemingly carved out of the staff itself. It was detailed beyond belief. He could almost see the individual fibers of its feathers.

The blade was another thing all together. It burned red and gold, like a petrified flame. It _glowed_ , flickering just like a fire. He almost wanted to touch it.

“These are her journals,” Strange said, pulling Frank’s attention away. “I guess we can try to preserve her privacy as much as we can. Let’s go through, see if we can find the 1840’s, and we’ll start reading there.”

Frank cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure. Sounds… Yeah.”

They sat down on the floor together with a stack of journals. Matt seemed at a loss for what to do since he couldn’t read them. Instead, Strange asked him to scan through the shelves, look for anything that might be relevant, search for anything hidden. Matt got back up and started working, just like Strange and Frank started their own work.

Frank didn’t remember much of the Ancient One just yet but he remembered enough to feel a little bad for going through her private thoughts like this. He tried to keep his mind unfocused; keep from retaining, or even really _reading,_  anything that seemed irrelevant.

They skimmed journal after journal as Matt moved slowly around the room.

Frank was getting impatient and irritated. He wished they would just _find something already!_  Anything at all! He just wanted to know more than what he already did. He just wanted to be told who he was, where he came from, why he was like this. He wished the Ancient One was still there so he could ask her himself. He wished none of this had happened in the first place!

He wished he hadn’t put that gun to his own head because maybe if he hadn’t, he’d still be blissfully ignorant.

If he had known what he was starting by loading that gun, he never would have done it. He never would have brought this on himself. Hell, he wouldn’t wish it on anyone in the world.

 _“Aha!”_  Matt let out.

Frank looked up from the journal he had been trying to get through.

Matt was across the small room, elbow-deep in one of the bookshelves, a stack of books on the floor by his feet.

“I got somethin’!” he explained. “The sound _moved_  weird right here, like there was a cavity in the shelf, and- wait… _There!”_

Something clicked and popped, wood clattering against wood.

A secret compartment?

Frank and Strange hurried over as Matt pulled his arm out. He clutched an old, yellowed envelope in his hand, covered in dust. He tried to tear it open for Frank, but…it wouldn’t budge. The paper wouldn’t rip.

“That’s…weird,” he mumbled. “That’s weird, right? It’s not just me?”

Strange hummed. He plucked the envelope out of Matt’s hand and only looked at it for a moment, turning it over a few times as he studied it.

“Oh, yeah, there’s definitely magic on this. Hm… Could be a protection spell,” he explained. “Keep it in one piece for as long as it needs to be. Keep anyone from reading it, aside from the one its meant for. You try.”

He handed it over to Frank.

The paper was rough and coarse; more so than, he’d suppose, modern paper. So it had to be pretty old, then. Might as well give it a shot.

He tore the side of the envelope with ease, like he would any piece of paper.

It was meant for him.

His heart raced.

He peered into the envelope and quickly pulled out the carefully folded parchment hidden inside.

 

_If you question why I didn’t come for you and tell you the truth, it’s because you asked me not to. You asked me to let you live your lives in peace, until you sought me out yourself or until I found a way to break your curse._

_But you didn’t come, and I didn’t find a way._

_I couldn’t see past my death so I don’t know if you will ever read this, but I decided it was better to leave you with something, rather than nothing._

_Go to the Master of Kamar-Taj and ask to be brought to the Chamber of Eagles._

_Take the spear off my wall. It’s yours. In my search, it was all I found for you._

_I know this isn’t what you wanted it to be. I know you wanted this to be every answer to your question. All I can say is that I’m sorry it’s not those things. I truly wish it could have been._

 

He folded the parchment together again. He swallowed dryly around the knot that had formed in his throat.

Matt and Strange watched in confusion as he moved over to the bed. He reached up at the spear.

The air around it felt thick and charged with electricity. It was like pushing his hand through a block of jell-o, the resistance trying to push him back and away.

His hand closed around the staff.

He could breathe freely for the first time. He felt _whole._  A missing part of his entity had been returned to him.

He took it down from its perch.

The electric charge surrounded him instead. It wrapped around his body. Every hair on his body stood on end.

_This belonged to him._


	20. Chapter 20

“Take me to the Chamber of Eagles.”

The Master’s face went blank in shock. She hadn’t expected to hear that. She stared at them all for a moment.

“Oh, dear…” she said softly. “I- I admit, I didn’t think it would happen so soon.”

Frank frowned, sharing a glance with Strange. “What d’you mean?”

The Master took a deep breath. She gestured for them to follow as she started walking.

“The Ancient One knew her death was coming, so she had time to prepare instructions for whoever was chosen to be Master after she was gone,” she started explaining as they moved. “She wrote about a secret room hidden in Kamar-Taj, called the Chamber of Eagles. She built it herself. She said that one day, sometime in the future, could be in a day or could be in a hundred years, she couldn’t say, someone would come and ask to be brought to this chamber. Whoever was Master was to bring this person to the chamber, _without question._  I… I really didn’t think it would happen in my time.”

A secret chamber built by the Ancient One herself… A secret place that no one but she knew about.

The Master lead them ob a winding path through the temple.

With Frank’s every step came the metallic _tong_  of the spear’s end striking the ground. He walked with it as though he’d never walked without it. The motion of it felt as natural as breathing. _The weight of it in his hand_  felt as natural as breathing. He couldn’t say how, but he _knew,_  without a shadow of a doubt, that this belonged to him and he belonged to it. He could almost hear it speaking to him; a crisp, clear, metallic voice singing soft words in his ear.

Matt clung to his arm still, walking close by Frank’s left side as the spear was in his right hand.

He heard the pulse pound in his ears, but…he could swear it wasn’t just his own. He could _swear_  that he head a whole chorus of heartbeats, drumming out an off-beat rhythm together. Frank smelled the old wood and stone bricks the temple was build with, he smelled Matt’s soft scent and the brazen hint of ozone which he could _somehow_  put down as _the scent of magic._

Was this what Matt lived with all the time? All these smells and sounds… It was a confusing mess of sensory inputs. Then again, Matt had had a lot more time to get adjusted to it all. Was it even real, though, or was Frank imagining it? It couldn’t be real, right? Frank’s senses had never been that strong before! His senses had always been on an average human level of sensitive!

Hm, then again, he was also now immortal, so yeah, maybe this whole senses thing was just part of the package deal.

They moved down a narrow staircase, ever step creaking under them. Even the hallway at the bottom of the stairs was tight and narrow. They all had to hunch slightly and walk somewhat sideways to fit through it.

The hallways were long and winding, and dark as hell. The burning blade of his spear lit the way for them, bathing the halls in the light of a roaring bonfire.

He couldn’t say how long they walked for, or how far they had gone. It felt like they had been walking for hours when he could finally see the end of the hallway and the door that sat there.

The Master, who was still in front, tried the handle but the door didn’t budge. She tried again, pulling harder first then pushing once too. She hummed in thought when it still refused to open. After a moment, she started doing all that fancy hand-waving Strange had done over the Ancient One’s door. Hm, the lock didn’t click this time. The door still wouldn’t open for her.

“Let him try,” Strange said. “She could’ve made sure no one but the right person could open it.”

They shuffled awkwardly around each other to trade places in the thin hallway.

Frank swallowed dryly once he stood before the door. He took a deep breath.

He grabbed the doorknob and turned it.

The door swung open easily for him, opening into the room.

He held the spear out like a torch to shed some light over the room. It was small and square and had no decorations or furniture at all. The only thing in the room was a pedestal right in the center of the floor. Something shiny lay on top of the pedestal. The group moved into the room almost as one, squeezing into the small space.

A feather?

What the hell…?

It was the size of Frank’s arm, from shoulder to fingertip, and looked like it was made out of pure gold. It shimmered in the flickering firelight.

Frank was…confused. What was this thing? It couldn’t be a _real_  feather, right? The bird it belonged to must have been _huge_  to produce a feather of that size!

“I’m not sure what I expected but this sure wasn’t it,” Strange admitted.

“Agreed,” the Master said. “But it must be important, right? She wouldn’t have hidden it this well if it wasn’t important.”

“What is it?” Matt asked. “All I’m getting is some kinda…oblong piece of metal?”

“It’s a feather,” Frank told him. “Made’a gold.”

“Oh…” Matt let out. “And…what now? I mean, are we supposed to do something with it?”

Frank shrugged. “One way to find out…”

He reached out and picked up the feather as gently as he could. It was, quite surprisingly when considering what it was made of, light as a feather. He ran his finger along its edge and was, again, surprised. It _wasn’t_  made of gold. It wasn’t metal.

It was an actual feather.

“Well, that raises some questions,” Strange said, watching the scene play out before him. “Mainly, what kind of bird leaves a feather that big?”

“And if it’s a real feather, why does sound react to it as if it were made of metal?” Matt added.

That was a good question too.

“It’s both,” Frank said.

“What?”

“There’s… A bird. An eagle,” he said.

He remembered it. Staring at the feather, he could remember it. Not very clearly, but there was _something_  there. He remembered _something._

“It’s huge. The size of a buildin’. Made’a gold. Bringing tidings of victory. And it… It wasn’t mine. It belonged to someone else, but then… Then it was given to me. I was trapped. But someone set me free, and _they_  gave me the eagle, even though it wasn’t theirs.  They…tied it to me. To punish it.”

“Why would someone punish an eagle?” Matt questioned. “I mean, what _reason_  would someone have to do something like that? To an animal, I mean.”

Frank swallowed the knot in his throat.

“Because it punished me first.”


	21. Chapter 21

“Where are we going now?” Matt asked somewhere behind him.

Frank shook his head to himself, didn’t stop walking. “I dunno. I dunno, I just- I gotta go. I dunno. _Somewhere.”_

They chattered behind him. He kept walking.

His head was spinning beyond belief.

Where did this giant eagle come from? Where had the eagle gone? _Where had it gone?_  Had it died? What was Frank supposed to do with the feather and why did the Ancient One lock it away so securely?

Where did the spear come from? What was it made of? How did the blade glow like that? Where had the Ancient One found it, and how had she known it was his?

A hand grabbed his arm tightly, making him stop and turn. Matt? What did he want now?

“Frank, let’s slow down, okay?” he urged gently. “Let’s just stop and take a breath.”

Frank sighed, pulling his arm out of Matt’s loose grip, and kept walking. “No, I need to keep going!”

“Going _where?”_  Matt shouted after him.

It made Frank stop.

As much he didn’t want to admit it, Matt was right. Going where? Where was he going now? What was the next step?

Matt appeared beside him, a calm, soft look on his face. He rested his hand on Frank’s arm.

“We don’t know where to go next,” the blind man said. “So let’s… Let’s go back to the Complex, meet up with the team, update ‘em with what we know, and just…brainstorm for a bit. Go through all your notes and stuff. Maybe we can find some kinda _clue,_  something to point us in _any_  direction. And…we need to rest, I think. Get some food, get cleaned up, maybe get some sleep. Frank. _Please._  You can’t keep searching if you’re too tired and too hungry to stand straight.”

The man sighed lowly again.

He knew Matt was right. He didn’t _want_  Matt to be right, but he knew that he was. Frank wanted to keep going, keep moving, keep finding out more about himself. But…he was hungry. He was tired. His head hurt with all these confusing thoughts and spiraling memories. And it wasn't like they had anywhere else to go. They were, basically, at a deadend.

He nodded. Matt squeezed his arm, grateful for the agreement.

The group started walking again. Calmly, this time. Matt didn't have to run to catch up to Frank. They moved back through the narrow hallways hidden in and under Kamar-Taj. Strange and the Master talked in hushed voices, as Matt and Frank lead the way.

Soon enough, they reached the stairs and returned to the temple itself.

As they came out of the secret tunnels, he and Matt thanked Strange and the Master for their help. The Master said she was happy to welcome them again, should they need anything more in their quest. Strange offered much of the same before stepping through a portal back to his Sanctum.

Frank followed the lead and opened one to the Complex.

*

They arrived in the Complex living room, much to the surprise of the residents currently in said room.

Matt and Frank were mostly unbothered by then. Really, they were mostly just glad to be back somewhere safe and relatively familiar.

Frank walked over to the dining room. He gently lay the feather and spear down on the table and took a seat. Matt moved past him, giving the man a pat on the shoulder in passing, to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee.

“Where are Frank’s things?” he asked the Avengers still gathered in the living room.

Frank was glad he didn’t need to do much more than sit there. His head was too full to talk to any of those assholes. He’d thank God for Matt. He watched Matt walk away together with Natasha. As they left, Stark and Rogers got up too; only, they walked over and sat down across from Frank in the dining room.

It looked like they’d both kill for a closer look at both the feather and the spear, but decided against touching what wasn’t theirs.

“So,” Stark said, hands clasped tightly before him. “What the hell happened?”

Looks like he was going to _have to_  talk to those assholes anyway…

Frank took a deep breath. “’Pparently, I was a wizard, back in the eighteen-hundreds.”

They looked at him like they didn’t _quite_  believe that, but neither of them argued, so there was that, Frank supposed.

“A friend was immortal too. She…found me this spear, the feather. Said they belong to me,” he said. “And…that’s ‘bout it.”

“And…what kinda feather is it?” Rogers asked.

He leaned in over the golden feather, looking closer at it.

“It’s hard to explain,” Frank admitted. “It’s from this huge golden eagle that someone I can't remember gave me after setting me free from some kinda prison, or somethin', that I also can't remember.”

“Ah,” Stark let out. _“I see.”_

“Yeah. Feels like its a long story.”

“Which kinda reminds me,” Rogers said. “-’cause I think you got _‘nother_  story to tell. A girl called Amy showed up at the gate and said you knew her.”

_“Shit.”_

Amy. What the hell was Amy doing here? And _now,_  of all times? She was supposed to be in Florida, where he didn’t have to worry about her!

“Where is she?” he asked.

“I let Thor and Clint know when you got back,” Friday informed swiftly. “They’re escorting her from the holding cells as we speak!”

Frank raised a brow at the other two men.

“Holding cells? _Really?_  She’s a teenage girl.”

Rogers scoffed. “Well, she tried to deck Thor, so teenager or not, she’s got _some_  balls…”

Frank snorted, a smirk creeping onto his lips. Trying to deck a guy like Thor? _Attagirl…_

Matt and Natasha returned as if on cue. Natasha headed over to the couch and threw herself down in her seat again, while Matt hurried over to sit down next to Frank and lay out the envelopes before them.

“Who’s Amy?” the blind man wondered curiously.

_“-you get your hands off’a me?! I can walk on my own!”_

Amy’s voice carried through the place.

 _“You quit your smirkin’, blondie, or I’ll put my fuckin’ foot up your ass!”_  she shouted as they appeared in the doorway.

She was almost being _dragged_  along by Clint’s hold on her arm, even while she tried to break loose. Frank got up to meet them. He _wanted_  to smile at seeing her again, it had been a good long while since he’d put her on the bus to Florida, _but_  he was also very angry at her for _leaving_  Florida even though _he very explicitly told her to stay in Florida and live a normal life._

“Amy.”

The girl froze, eyes flying up to find him. “Frank!”

Clint let her go. She didn’t waste any time in running across the dining room and throwing herself at him in a tight hug. Of course, he easily caught her, hugging her back just as tight. He _was_  angry, but he was also _really_  happy to see her.

“Fuck, I was so worried, Frank, you idiot, where’d you go?!” she chattered in his ear.

She pulled out of the hug after that and shoved him. He actually stumbled back slightly; hm, his girl was gettin’ strong!

 _“Where were you?!”_  she yelled at him, shoving him again. “Why didn’t you answer your fucking phone, _you asshole?!”_

Frank let her yell. She’d been worried, upset, that was obvious. He wouldn’t patronize her by invalidating her feelings.

“I called you, _as per the predetermined check-in schedule that_ you _set up for us,_  but you didn’t answer! So I called again and again and _again,_  and you _still_  didn’t answer! So I called _Karen!_  A-A-And she said she had no clue where you’d gone, so I got on the first flight to New York to _find you!_  Then when I get there, Karen calls and says _you’re in Europe with the fucking Avengers?!_  So I come here to wait for you, but then they all come back and tell me _you went missing?!_  I’ve had, like, ten heart-attacks in the last three days because of _your dumb, fugly ass!”_

Okay, that’s fair.

“You’re one of _literally_  only _two_  adults in my life who have _ever_  given a shit about me, and you pull this shit?! Like it or not, and _admit it or not,_  but you’re the closest fucking thing I’ve ever had to a goddamn _dad!_  Forgive me if I expect some fuckin’ _reliability_  from you. I’ve only ever _had_  a deadbeat dad, but I… I thought _you_  were better than that.”

That hit Frank like a fucking stab in the gut. And shit, the way the girl sniveled and dried her eyes on her jacket sleeve…

He grabbed her and pulled her into another hug, tighter than before, cradling her head to his shoulder, petting her hair, swaying slowly like he was rocking a baby, hushing her softly as she cried.

“’M sorry, kiddo. _‘M sorry.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you hadnt noticed, this series is literally all first drafts, theres no editing here, i die on this hill


	22. Chapter 22

They relocated to a conference room, and the whole Avengers team flooded in to join the meeting.

Frank’s possessions were spread out among them. It was…a little uncomfortable to have his writings out in the open like that, for everyone to read as they pleased. But he knew it was probably for the best, in the end. He had read through it all a hundred times it felt like, and he had come up empty. With all these fresh eyes, maybe something new would come from it.

Matt sorted through the knick-knacks carefully. He studied each one in great detail, before setting it gently aside and moving on to the next. Someone sat next to him, going through the photos, as well as anything that needed to be visually inspected as opposed to only touched.

A few of the Avengers had strung the maps up on the wall, comparing them back and forth, taking notes, a hushed conversation going on between them.

They had doled out the texts among the remaining heads. They worked on translating everything from whatever language they had been written in, to English.

To be honest… As much as Frank disliked sharing these things with everyone, he was grateful for their help.

“Castle,” Rogers said, drawing everyone’s attention to himself. “I think you should hear this.”

He sorted through his papers quickly for a moment.

“Found this note stuck at the bottom’a one of the envelopes. Seems like it was written in, I dunno, maybe the seventies? It’s French, _Canadian French,_  so Friday had to help with some’a the dialect stuff, but…I translated it as closely as I could.”

Frank nodded. “Read it.”

Rogers looked around the room, at everyone who waited to hear what he had discovered. He cleared his throat and looked back down at his translation.

“Okay, here goes, I guess,” he hummed. _“Dear future self, that’s a weird way to start this thing but I guess it’s really the only way to start it. I have figured a few things out and I thought it was best to write it all down. So here it is. Once you realize what you are, your memories will start coming back. Sooner or later, you’ll remember all your past ‘lives’. I don’t know how or why, but that’s the way it works.”_

The room was silent. Everyone had stopped to listen.

_“As for why we’re like this? I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. As far as I recall right now, we’ve tried to figure that out in pretty much every life. We just haven’t found the answer yet. Maybe one day.”_

Frank swallowed; there was a knot the size of a brick sitting in his throat. His body felt as heavy as lead.

_“And how it works? I can’t say for certain. I can say, though, that in this life, I went back to where my last one was.”_

What? He went back?

 _“To the place I lived. An old woman lived there, a woman I now recognized as my beloved wife, Eliza, from that previous life. The thing is,_ my face hadn’t changed. _I still looked the exact same as I did the day I married her. And yet, she didn’t recognize me. She didn’t know who I was. She invited me inside. In the place where out wedding photo used to hang, was instead a photo of Eliza as a child. She told me she had never married. That her children,_ my children, _our two sons Ethan and Charles, were the products of two different relationships with men whom she had never informed of her pregnancies. She said they had never known a proper father. It took all I had in me to not burst out crying right there in that living room. My sweet boys…”_

Frank’s body ached with grief. His sons… He remembered them now, very faintly. Ethan and Charles. He remembered chasing Ethan around their backyard, the kid screaming with laughter. He remembered tucking Charles in and sitting on the floor next to his bed, holding his hand, until the kid fell asleep because he was still scared of the dark.

 _“As I gather, when our time is up (how long that time is I can’t say yet), we are_ erased and moved. _Somehow, we are erased from the memories of everyone we’ve ever come come to hold dear and all evidence of our existence is destroyed, and we are transplanted into a new life. We are given memories in this new life. We come into it as we are, fully grown men, but still somehow have memories of a childhood we never truly had. People around us are given memories of us. Made to know us. Then, we just keep going like nothing ever happened, not remembering the people we left behind or that this life is new to us.”_

Frank’s eyes fell closed. His _soul_  got so tired as he listened to this. He had been searching for answers for so long.

_“Until we discover what we are. We always do. Sooner or later, we know. We’re forced to live with it. It’s cruel. It’s a punishment, it must be. To be repeatedly ripped away from everyone we love, like this? Then spoon-fed a new reality, given new people to love, only to watch them get taken away again… I don’t know what we did to deserve this. That’s the one thing I can never remember.”_

He felt Matt’s hand slip into his and squeeze it tight. When he opened his eyes, he saw how they all looked at him. They pitied him. He could see it clear as day.

“And…that’s it,” the Captain said, his voice low.

Frank swallowed around that same knot. Amy took his other hand, sniveling into her sleeve again.

“But-”

Everyone’s eyes darted over to Barnes, who stood by the wall of maps, a tight frown on his face.

“What’s up, Buck?” Rogers asked.

“I just… I was just thinkin’. If he gets _erased_  when he ‘dies’,” he said, air quotes and all. “-then how did the Ancient One remember him? A-And if all evidence of his existence is erased, how could you find all this stuff in Italy? Shouldn’t she have forgotten him, and shouldn’t those things’ve been erased too? What’s so special about her? And about that place?”

That seemed to stump everyone.

It was a good fucking question. If everyone forgot him, how could the Ancient One have remembered him? And how was his name still in those record books? And how come his things were still hidden in the synagogue?

 _“Consecrated ground!”_  Matt shouted.

That only raised questions.

“No, no, no, hear me out!” Matt insisted. “If this is _a curse,_  then maybe those places are protected! I mean, a synagogue is a _holy_ place, right? It’s a _house of God,_  so maybe _that_  protects it! A-And Kamar-Taj is a temple, right? That’s a holy place, so that _could mean_  it’s protected too! And if the Ancient One is, I dunno, like a _priest_  in that temple, then maybe she was protected too. I mean, it’s a _theory,_  right?”

“You’re saying that, what?” Sam said, hesitant and disbelieving. _“God_  protected those maps and journals, and all that?”

Matt shrugged. “Maybe not _God,_  in that way, but… As an example, the myth about vampires says they can’t set foot on consecrated ground because they were cursed to be an affront to God,” he continued to theorize. “And I can’t speak for the merit of _that_  myth, but I mean… Consecrated ground is pure and holy, and _untainted._  Maybe that’s what protected those places from being _tainted_  by this curse, just like it protects them from vampires. In the myths, anyway.”

The room was quiet for a minute, as everyone took a moment to just _digest_  what Matt just said.

Honestly, it _was_  a theory, which was more than they had had just a minute ago.

Fuck, Frank’s head hadn’t stopped hurting since this whole thing got started. What a mess… He just wanted to go back to how things were before all this.

Banner sighed, removing his glasses and rubbing at his eyes. _“Okay._ So, let’s just…go over what we know,” he said, sounding about as exhausted as Frank felt. “Frank is immortal. He’s been around since, _at least,_  the Roman era, since he can remember being a gladiator.”

“I was imprisoned at some point,” Frank added, and picked up the golden feather, running his fingers over its soft fibers. “And the golden eagle was there. Then someone set me free, and _gave me_  the eagle.”

 _“Wait!”_  Amy all but shouted suddenly. “Wait, wait, wait! You were imprisoned and there was an eagle there?”

Frank nodded and shrugged. “Yeah? Don’t remember no details but…yeah.”

“Okay, okay, okay, hold on!”

Amy shot out of her seat and ran over to the corner where she had thrown her bag aside.

“So there’s this diving expedition in the Mediterranean area in a few month, and my diving instructor is one of the guy’s who’s been hired in to do the actual diving for artifacts,” she explained as she was rifling through her bag. “And _he said,_  that if I can get my certificate before the expedition starts, I can come with! _So,_  I’ve been reading up on the area and on the types of artifacts we might find there, _which_  lead to me reading a lot about Greek mythology! _Here it is!”_

She pulled a big book out of her bag, running back to the table with it. She threw it open and flipped through the pages quickly, as thought she knew _exactly_  where to find what she was searching for.

“Here.”

She slid the book over to him, showing him the pages. A piece of art sprawled out over the pages, the colors vibrant and bright, almost glowing on through the paper.

It was an image of a mountaintop, the sky dark and cloudy behind it. A man was chained to the rocks, naked save for the shroud around his hips. There was a look of pure _anguish_  on his face. Hell, Frank could see why. An eagle hovered at his side, its talons digging into his side, its beak ripping out his flesh. The blood looked so real.

“Prometheus was _imprisoned_ on a mountaintop by Zeus, for stealing fire and giving it to humans. His punishment was to have his liver pecked out by _an eagle_  every day, only to have it regenerate over night and pecked out again the next day. _But_ < Prometheus was _freed_  by Hercules, who, _as a demi-god,_  is totally the kinda guy who could trap a giant golden eagle!”

Frank stared at the man in the painting.

“I’m just sayin’,” Amy hummed. “That part fits.”

Was that him? Was... Was he a god?


	23. Chapter 23

“Let me get this straight,” Strange said, looking at them all like they were a bunch of morons. “Currently, the working theory is that…Castle is the Greek titan _Prometheus?”_

Frank cleared his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

Strange let out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. _“Okay._  Fine. Alright. Castle is a titan, sure, okay, let’s go with that,” he rambled to himself, then looked back at the man himself. “And do you _remember_  being…a titan?”

He very obviously thought it was complete bullshit. Then again, so did Frank. Kind of.

“Not exactly,” he admitted. “But apparently the thing about being trapped then freed and the eagle, it fits with the Prometheus mythos. According to Amy’s book, at least.”

“Yeah, check it out,” the girl said.

She slid the open book across the table into Strange’s waiting hands. He studied the painting for a moment, then flipped through the pages to read the texts for himself.

“Is there anything we can, y’know, _do_  now?” Matt asked. “I mean, some way to get his memories back? If he’s got his memories, then he can tell us for himself who he is.”

Everyone stood around the conference room, watching Strange, waiting for his answer.

The man hummed in thought. He closed Amy’s book gently and slid it back to her. He leaned back in his seat, stroking his beard as he continued to think things over.

“The Ancient One’s letter said she hadn’t found any way to help you,” he said. _“But_  I suppose I can go through the libraries again. Both at Kamar-Taj, and all the Sanctums. I can’t make any promises, of course, but…I’ll see if I can find anything. I can get the other Masters to help too, cut down on the time it’ll take, but it’ll still take a while.”

“How long?” someone asked, standing somewhere behind where Frank sat.

“Hard to say. I’ll get started right away and let you know if there’s any progress. My advice is that you stay here and do your best to try to jog some memories. Perhaps you’ll even remember something that can help us help you.”

The wizard got up. He stepped through a portal and disappeared.

The room was tense and quiet.

Stark cleared his throat as he got out of his seat at the table. “How about I order in some food and…we’ll keep at it?”

*

They had had no more luck all day. Despite all their searching, they had found nothing.

At least the team had been kind enough to give him an actual _room_  this time around. It was a small guestroom, nothing special. Frank didn’t care too much. He was just glad to have a proper bed.

There was a muted knock at his door. Frank reached over to the nightstand and turned on the light.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened and Matt peeked his head in.

“Hey,” he mumbled.

“Hey,” Frank mumbled back.

“I just… Um. Can I come in?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He sat up as Matt entered the room fully. He closed the door softly behind himself, and stood awkwardly there, looking as though he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.

“So… What’s up?” Frank said.

Matt cleared his throat. He ran a hand through his hair.

“I was just… I guess I figured that… If I was in your place, I wouldn’t…want to be alone,” the blind man admitted, wringing his hands. “But I can leave if you _do_  wanna be alone. I wanted to…at least _offer,_  I guess. To let you know that you _aren’t_  alone.”

Frank’s insides warmed and clenched. The kindness of it stewed in his chest, squeezing his heart.

He shuffled over from the middle of the big double bed to one side, leaving room for another. He pulled the covers back; a silent invitation.

Matt smiled. He shuffled over quickly. Frank watched him remove his t-shirt and step out of his sweatpants, and crawl into bed wearing only his boxers. Frank lay down too. He reached up and turned out the light again. They lay there together, ample room between them. Frank stared into the darkness at the shapes that seemed to dance there.

“How are you?”

Frank took a deep breath. He honestly didn’t know what to say. How was he supposed to answer a question like that?

“C’mon,” Matt plied, something close to a smile audible in his voice. “Doctor Murdock’s psychiatric clinic is open for business.”

At that, Frank couldn’t stop himself from snorting. Fuck… All that seemed like it happened a thousand years ago. So much had happened in such a short time, so much had changed. His world had been turned on its head a million times over. He didn’t know what to do with himself. Where was he supposed to go from there? What was he supposed to do now?

“I keep thinkin’…about Maria. Junior and Lisa.”

He closed his eyes. The shapes still danced in the darkness.

“I remember my entire life with them. But is it really _my_  life? Or did I just… _replace_  some other guy? And if I did, where’d that guy go? Is he out there somewhere? Does he even know that…that his kids are gone? Or were they mine all along? I… I dunno which’d be worse. And…did Maria ever love _me?_  Or did she love this other guy that I replaced, then just _thought_  she loved me because she thought I was that guy? Was I even a marine? Is Curt _my_  friend? Did _I_  love Billy like a brother, or was that someone else? And if that guy’d still been around…would Billy still have done what he did? Or would they all still be alive?”

The covers rustled as Matt moved. He felt Matt take his hand and he squeezed it tight for a moment.

“I can’t answer all those questions, Frank,” he said, his voice soft and low. “I wish I could. I wish I could answer every question you have and tell you everything you want to know. But I can’t. All I can say, I guess, is that…does it really matter if you replaced someone or not?”

Frank’s throat felt tight and constricted. Fuck, it felt hard to breathe.

 _“You_  love Maria. _You_  love Junior and _you_  love Lisa. Maria only ever knew _you_  as her husband, and the kids only knew _you_  as their father. If there’s someone out there, who was Frank Castle before you took their place…then they must have a new life too. I can’t speak for what that life is like, but I’m sure they’re happy there. I’m sure they have a new family. New people to love and to love them. If they didn’t have a new life, then they would’ve come looking for their old life, wouldn’t they? But _they didn’t._  So that must mean they’ve got that new life, right? And if they believe that life is their true life…then what damage has been done? Maria still had a husband that she loved. The kids still had a father they loved. Does it really matter _who_  that man was?”

Those words squeezed Frank’s heart even tighter. The sadness and grief and _confusion_  gathered as a wet knot in his throat, tears stinging his eyes and blurring the dancing shapes.

“And if it helps, well… You didn’t replace anyone in _my_  life. And I will try as hard as I can to _always_  remember you. I know you as _Frank._  You are _no one_  else. Not to me. I don’t care if you’re Prometheus, or _God_  Himself! You’re still Frank. You’ll always be Frank to me.”

It did help.

The ice cold fist that was wrapped so tightly around his heart seemed to grow warmer. The tightness grew less painful; less stabbing. The ache became blunted and throbbing instead. It pulsed in him in time with his heartbeat.

“Thank you,” he said softly, his voice barely more than a gravelly rasp.

It was hard to speak, hard to make the words come out of his mouth. Everything just seemed trapped in his chest, congested together in a dense block, weighing down his very soul. It felt like there was just a _stone_  sitting where his organs should be. He couldn’t move for the weight of it.

Matt moved again. The covers rustled around him. The mattress dipped. Frank felt Matt shuffle closer to his side, leaning over him, a gentle hand caressing Frank’s face in the dark room.

“I won’t forget you, Frank,” he promised. “I could never forget you.”

The press of Matt’s lips against his seemed to lift the weight from Frank’s chest. Not all of it. Not the whole of the giant stone that crushed him, but it chipped away at it. It chipped away piece after piece, small as they may be, and that seemed to make all the difference.

Matt’s body was warm and soft under his hands. Even the scars that littered his skin seemed as soft as silk. It felt good to touch him; it felt easy and simple, nothing complicated about it. It felt like the easiest thing in the world to be in that moment with Matt, and their hands and mouths on each other.

The blind man moved again. His hands moved down Frank’s chest. Frank hadn’t even noticed how hard he was until Matt’s hand groped at his erection through his boxers. Frank hissed, a bolt of teasing pleasure blasting through him. His hands groped at Matt’s ass, pulling him closer, sliding their bodies together. Matt gasped into the kiss.

“Wanna get naked?” he asked.

Frank could almost _see_  his grin, even in the pitch black room. He snorted at the question. He squeezed at Matt’s ass again; fuck, he had a nice ass, all soft and plump and jiggly.

“We gonna need condoms?” Frank asked. "Or we doin' somethin' else?"

Matt glued his mouth to Frank’s neck, sucking and licking at his skin. “Fucking get inside me,” he moaned, and wasn't that just the most amazing string of words Frank had ever heard.

They tore themselves away from each other. Frank turned the light back on. He shuffled out of his boxers, Matt doing the same beside him, and tossed them aside. He threw open the drawer of the closest nightstand, hoping to God that Stark stocked these guestrooms properly. _Oh, thank fucking Christ,_  he found a myriad of different lubes and condoms, giving for a variety of choices.

Fuck it, he grabbed a bottle of basic lube, nothing special about it, and a condom of the same type; he figured they were both a little too horny at the moment to bother with anything fancy. They could get around to that another time.

Matt lay waiting, short of breath, stroking his cock with one hand, the other tugging and pinching at his nipples. God, that was hot. Frank jumped on him; his mouth went to Matt’s chest, his hands too. He fondled at Matt’s toned, full pecs, mouth closing over one of his nipples. Matt threw his head back in a moan.

Frank didn’t want to waste time, though. Going by how Matt canted his hips up, grinding against Frank, searching for touch and friction, he felt the same. Frank got moving again. He trailed his mouth quickly downwards; the kisses were open-mouthed, wet and messy, soft groans leaving him, vibrating into Matt’s soft skin. He teased the kisses around the base of Matt’s cock, lapped at his balls for a moment, then dipped lower.

The blind man started at a loud moan as Frank’s tongue brushed the tight furl of his rim, but quickly covered his mouth, biting down on his knuckles. Smart, probably best if no one walked in on this.

“Lube, gimme the lube,” Frank said, before going back to work.

Matt whined. He pawed over the bed, feeling around for the bottle. Frank sucked gently at his rim, humming softly at it, pressing his tongue into it, teasing inside, feeling Matt clench slightly at the intrusion. The lube changed hands. Frank poured a good amount into his hands quickly and continued not to waste time.

Matt had to cover his mouth again as Frank’s first finger pushed slowly into him.

“Fuck, c’mere, lemme kiss you,” Matt said, his voice caught between a whisper and a moan.

Frank crawled up his body. They met in another perfect, delicious kiss as Frank opened him. He did it fast, but as gently as he could. He could feel the desperation hanging over them. They both wanted it _so incredibly bad,_  they couldn’t wait much longer.

Before they knew it, Frank had rolled on the condom and started pushing into Matt.

 _“Fuck-”_  Frank gasped.

He was still so tight; hot and wet and soft, wrapping so perfectly tight around Frank’s cock as he slowly, slowly, slowly fed himself inside. Matt moaned under him. His thick, powerful legs locked around Frank’s waist, heels digging into Frank’s ass; his nails dug into Frank’s back and neck, tugging at his hair. The way he sounded when he moaned into Frank’s lips… Fuck, Frank wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anything like it. The sound was just _perfection._

 _“Give it to me,”_  Matt pleaded. _“Want it, Frank, please.”_

How could Frank even _try_  to say no?

His fingers sunk into the soft flesh of Matt’s thighs, pulling him as close as physically possible. He rolled his body into Matt’s. God, he took it slow but reached so deep. He loved the feeling of Matt wrapped around him, in every way. Tight around his cock, legs at his waist, arms at his shoulder, holding him near, refusing to let him leave.

Not that Frank would ever leave a moment like this.

Everything rushed to his head; the pleasure of moving with Matt, their bodies touching all over, the taste of Matt’s lips and his tongue, his fingers tugging on Frank’s hair, the ball of his heels driving into Frank’s ass and urging him deeper and closer, the soft sounds of Matt’s heavy breaths and deep groans, it was like a shot of morphine straight to the brain. It was soothing and calming, anaesthetic for his soul.

He became numb to all the pain he had ever suffered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im so glad these gays finally get to bone


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> contains minor spoilers for the 2017 movie Shot Caller, in which Jon played the charachter Frank "Shotgun"
> 
> the chapter also contains some homophobic language, so read with caution, if that bothers you <3

He kept his head down at breakfast. Didn’t want to draw attention. Didn’t want to start shit. He hunched over his plate, eating quickly and quietly. Hell, he was always happy to answer when trouble came knocking, but he didn’t want to start none. Not now, not here. Not with Bottles watching him. And fuck, if Bottles got word to Beast about him doing shit out of turn, he’d get green-lit faster than he could say his own fucking name.

No shit. No trouble.

He stared down at his food. Fuck, this food looked good. Looked better than the usual prison grub. Where the hell did they get this shit?

Shotgun’s own arms caught his eye.

They were clean and plain.

That… _That wasn’t right._  He had to be imagining shit. He rubbed at his eyes but when he looked again, his arms were still clean. Where’d his ink go?

He looked around the table.

He didn’t know these people. He didn’t know this place.

_What the fuck?_

“Frank, are you okay?” some guy next to him asked.

Ain’t no one called him Frank in a good while.

“Yeah. Yeah, ‘m fine,” he said, still.

He lay his hand over the knife next to his plate. Who gave him a knife? He had to get out of there.

He’d find Chopper. Or Money. They’d know what was going on.

No. Wait. _Money._  Money didn’t- _Back at his place._  Money had been there. He’d been at the door and Shotgun opened it. Then he… He came in and he-

A hand squeezed his thigh. He stared down at the hand. The guy next to him, it was _his_ hand, he leaned in to whisper.

“Sure you’re okay?” he asked. “Your heart’s ra-”

Shotgun grabbed the man’s hand, twisting it back and up. Grabbed the knife, put it to the guy’s throat.

Hell of a racket all around them

“You keep your fuckin’ _fag ass hands off’a me,_  ya hear?” Shotgun hissed. “Or I’ll gut ya like a fuckin’ pig, ya fuckin’ sissy!”

 _“Frank!”_  someone else shouted.

Shotgun didn’t move; he glanced over at the voice, though, for the briefest of moments. Some big wood stood on the other side of the table, gun on Shotgun. People all around him had guns too.

“Put the knife down,” the wood said calmly. “Or we will shoot.”

Shotgun growled; he shoved the guy away. Everyone lowered their weapons. He got up out of his seat, shoving the guy again. _Fuckin’ fairy, gettin’ ‘em sick hands all over him, fuckin’ disgusting._

 _“Money!”_  he shouted into the room, looking around, searching for the man. “Where ya fuckin’ at, Money?! Come out, come out, wherever ya are! See right through this thing, man! Ain’t no fuckin’ punk!”

The people were closer now. The fairy was up too, they were all getting closer.

“What’s your name?” someone asked. “Who are you looking for?”

Shotgun held up the knife, shuffling back from them.

 _“Stay away!”_  he yelled. “You stay away!”

“Just breathe for us. Okay?” some lady said. “Tell us what’s going on. We’ll help you.”

He slashed after them, made them flinch back to avoid the blade.

“Where’s my fuckin’ ink, man?” he hissed. “Where is it?! What’d you do to me?!”

“What ink? What do you mean?”

“Fuckin’ tattoos! _My tattoos!_  Where they at, huh?! What’d you do?!” he yelled.

His skin itched, his head pounded, his chest burned with stabbing pain.

 _Stabbing?_  Stabbing. Money stabbed him. Money- Money killed him. Blood everywhere. And it was hard to breathe.

“Fuck, _Money, fuckin’ bastard,”_ he rambled, eyes flitting around to all the faces in front of him. “Fuckin’ sonuvabitch, came in my fuckin’ house and fuckin’ stabbed me, man, and- _ah, fuck,_  Kutcher, that fuckin’ bastard!”

He clutched at his head, it pounded worse and worse, his hand shaking as he gripped the knife tighter.

“It’s okay, take it easy. Breathe. Just keep breathing. If you calm down, we can talk about this. We can figure out what’s going on.”

Fuck, oh, fuck, he felt the pain in his chest again, just like when Money put the knife in him, over and over and over, fuck, he looked down at his chest and shit, his shirt was _soaked_  in blood, it was everywhere, it hurt so bad, he was getting so dizzy.

“Ain’t no punk,” he said. “A-Ain’t no punk, man, ain’t no punk.”

He tasted blood on his lips. It poured out of his mouth.

His knees folded under him.

*

Matt squeezed Frank’s hand again.

He’d been unconscious for close to six hours now. After collapsing in the dining room, seemingly on the verge of bleeding out, they had rushed him to the medical wing for help. They had taken him straight into surgery. When they cut open his shirt, though, there were no wounds. There _nothing_  for all that blood to have come out of.

That didn’t stop him from bleeding, though.

The blood just seeped out of his pores, clearly showing where the wound _should_ have been. They had to turn him on his side to make sure he wouldn’t choke on the blood pouring out of his mouth. No matter how hard they tried, though, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

So they let him bleed.

Being immortal, the blood-loss wouldn’t kill him.

It was all they knew to do. They couldn’t _fix him_  if there was nothing to fix.

When it finally stopped, the operating theater had stank of blood. A pool of it lingered under the table. Mat had had to leave the spectating room long before that. The smell was too intense; it made him sick to his stomach.

From what he had been told, the doctors and nurses cleaned him up and moved him to a recovery room, a steady stream of blood bags feeding into his system.

So that’s where they were at; just waiting for him to wake up again.

Matt couldn’t stop thinking about it. About what happened. About what Frank said.

He _knew_  it wasn’t actually Frank. Not really. It was _someone else._  One of his past lives. Someone Frank had no control over. Just a flash of someone who was long since dead and gone.

But it had been Frank’s voice. And Frank’s hand holding the knife to his throat. If Matt ran his fingers over his throat, Matt could feel where the blade had broken only the very top layers of skin. It hadn’t drawn blood, only leaving a thin little mark.

It made him sick to think about it. To remember Frank’s voice saying those things. It was the same voice that had moaned his name the night before. The same voice that had told him how good he felt, how much he like being with him.

He cleared his throat and blinked away the tears when he heard the door open behind him.

“You said _with cream,_  right?” Amy asked lowly.

“Yeah,” Matt answered, accepting the paper cup of coffee she held out to him. “Thanks.”

She rounded the bed and sat down at Frank’s other side, taking his hand as well. She sipped her tea slowly.

“I’m-… I’m sorry he said all those things to you,” the girl said. “I know it wasn’t _him,_  but… Y’know what I mean.”

Matt nodded. “Yeah. It’s happened before. He’s… _changed_  before. He just never…said things like _that_  before.”

“It wasn’t Frank,” Amy reminded him determinedly. “Not _our_  Frank. Whoever it was, what he thought doesn’t matter anymore. You were just trying to help _our_  Frank.”

He nodded again. “I know. But hearing it in his voice…” he said, trailing off.

He wasn’t sure what more to say. He was speechless. Incapable of finding the proper words.

It cut him deep.

He didn’t know who this other person was. He didn’t know what their life had been like, what made them _think_ and _say_ those gross things. He knew it wasn’t Frank who said them and thought them, but it was his voice and his face.

It just kept playing on repeat in his head. Frank’s voice saying words like _fag_  and _sissy,_  and it made Matt’s skin crawl. He’d been called those things before, that wasn’t it, that wasn’t what hurt the most. It was hearing _Frank_  say them that hurt. In his logical brain, he knew it _wasn’t_  Frank, and he repeated the fact to himself every time the words played in his head. But in his emotional, _illogical_  brain, it _was_  Frank that said it.

That part of his brain burned with pain at hearing that from Frank, of all people. Matt could take it from anyone else in the world and not give a damn, but…what Frank thought _mattered_  to him.

He hoped Frank would wake up soon. Amy had told him the man looked…pale. Ashy and sickly. The way his body looked in Matt’s mind reflected the same. His body was quieter; dull and muted. His heartbeat was slow, but steady. His breathing was choppy and shallow. His lungs hissed and murmured with the effort every breath took.

Matt hated this. The waiting, the worrying, the imaging every worst case scenario. He hated not being able to do anything to help.

He gave Frank’s hand one more gentle squeeze before getting up.

“Sorry, I just… I need to get some air,” he told Amy.

The girl said nothing about it, only nodding.

Matt moved towards the door. He had only just put his hand on the doorknob when Frank moved.

In an instant, he was sitting up, gasping for air, breathing like he’d never felt air this pure before.

Amy jolted in shock, the tea splashing and sloshing in her cup.

Frank’s heart raced; he felt over his own body as if searching for injuries. Matt hurried to his side, quickly taking his hand.

“Frank, oh, God, Frank, you scared the hell out of us,” he admitted, relieved as hell.

The man shook his head. The man was odd and jerky.

*

He had to go. There was something he needed to do. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew it _needed_  to be done.

Something, something, _something!_  Why couldn’t he remember what it was?

The people around him were familiar but felt distant. Unimportant. No, they were important to him, but this _something_  he needed to do was more important, because-

 _Because_  what? Why? Why was it important?

He could see...

He could see _gold._  Giant golden wings, cutting through the air, soaring above the earth. They were all around him, then there was a sharp pain in his side and he was screaming and the pain lasted for so long, he was going crazy with how much it hurt.

Then the golden wings were in the air again, and he could breathe for a moment.

And then…

The golden wings were carrying him. He was floating through the air, moving so fast, the glint of the gold in the sun was the most incredible thing.

_“Aetos Dios.”_

“What’s that?” Matt asked, his voice and his smile equally soft. “What’s that mean?”

_“Aetos Dios!”_

Frank pushed him away. He dragged himself out of bed and ran for the door.

_The feather! Where was the feather, he needed it, he needed to set it free!_


	25. Chapter 25

Where was it?! Where?!

His thundering steps echoed through the hallways as he ran. He could hear Matt and Amy following him, shouting after him.

_The conference room!_

It was still in the conference room, they left it there after everything! Where was the conference room?

The hospital gown fluttered and rustled as he ran. They were still shouting his name behind him. There were more voices now. They were all telling him to slow down, to explain what he wanted, maybe they could help if they only knew.

He didn’t need their help now. Not now. He knew what to do. He knew _exactly_  what to do.

Frank burst into the conference room. He all but threw himself over the long table, scrambling after the golden feather and the spear. He took them both and pushed through the crowd that had gathered in the door.

 _“Frank!”_  someone shouted. “What’s going on?!”

“Aetos Dios!” Frank answered finally, running again. “He’s waiting!”

He skidded around corner after corner, running and running and running, finding his way through the maze of the Complex.

There it was!

The glass wall of windows in the common area, facing out to the terrace and the pool and the plains of grass surrounding the Complex. That was where he needed to go. He needed to be outside, under the sky, under the blazing sun.

The stones of the terrace were hot under his feet as he came outside. The grass was warm too, still moist with traces of dew. Everyone was behind him again, watching him.

He stopped.

They stopped.

They kept their distance.

Frank kneeled in the bright green grass. He set his spear to the side. He took the feather in both hands, holding it up to the sky like an offering to the heavens. The gold glinted in the sun.

He lay the feather down on the ground. He bowed his head in respect.

The gold melted. Slowly, slowly, slowly, it melted and liquefied, dripping into the dirt and grass. He watched it melt away into the earth.

He started digging. He ripped at the grass; his fingers sank into the dirt. Matt appeared next to him. He went on his knees and started digging too.

“Frank, _what_  are we looking for?” he questioned, even as he kept digging and searching.

“Aetos Dios!” Frank told him for the hundredth time. “Eagle of Zeus, creation of Gaia, son of the Mother!”

The dirt moved under their hands. Something was there, something was buried there, in the earth.

Frank dug harder, faster. He needed to find him!

_Something burst out of the ground like a bullet from a gun, as small as one too._

They both fell back from the pit they had dug.

_It flew into the air, bright and shining and blinding._

Frank scrambled to his feet. His eyes followed the golden form as it soared through the air, spreading its wings for the first time in so long.

It looked just like he remembered.

An enormous eagle, gold with life breathed into it.

They all watched as he came down to the earth. He beat his giant wings, easing him down, he was grace itself. He stared at them with shining yellow eyes. The sun made him glisten. He stood twenty feet tall with his head high. He towered over them all.

Frank walked towards him. He held up his hand to him.

The eagle lowered his head to meet him. He placed his beak against Frank’s palm, greeting him.

It was like seeing part of his family again. Frank’s heart warmed with an intense sense of love and familiarity. The ache of missing his family was eased; it was an ache he hadn’t realized was there, but that it was so strongly eased, he could feel how much _lighter_  he was.

He held out his hand. His spear came to him as if drawn to a magnet. It placed itself in his hand, _where it belonged._

Aetos spread his wings, reaching it down to the ground.

Frank climbed up it with ease.

He sat astride Aetos’ back, holding on tightly to his brilliant feathers.

Before he could say the word, they were in the air.

It felt like magic. It felt like he was riding into the war to fight his siblings and serve a man who would come to betray him. A bone-deep dread sat in his heart but the wind rushing through his hair, whipping at his face, made it float away like it weighed nothing. Aetos screeched under him, wings beating. The sound made him miss the feeling of blood on his face, dirt in his sandals, the noise of battle raging below him. The pain of being forced by allegiance to kill his siblings made him _hate_  missing those things.

He shut his eyes tight.

So many memories rushed back to him. Things once set in stone flooded into his like water into a chalice. The words written on his soul made themselves known again. Every ache and injury burned through him for a brief moment.

_He remembered who he was._

He kicked his heels and leaned in. Aetos dove towards the ground, towards the sprawling green meadows of the Complex.

They landed. Aetos’ giant talons sank into the soft dirt. Frank jumped down from astride his back. He walked to meet the others.

Behind him, the eagle transformed. A golden eagle’s head formed as decoration on Frank’s spear, sitting just under the fiery blade. He carried Aetos with him.

“I remember,” he told Matt. “I know who I am. I-It’s crazy, can’t believe it, but I _remember_  it all!”

Matt nodded. “O-Okay. Who are you? Where’d you come from? How did this happen to you? Where the hell did that _eagle thing_  come from?”

“My father was Iapetus, son of Gaia and Uranus. My mother was the Oceanid Clymene, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. My sister was Ankhiale. My brothers were Atlas, Menoetius, and Epimetheus.”

His voice was soft. It felt broken as it left him. All he could think about was how he had lost them all. They were the first in the long line of family he had lost; the only he had lost before the curse was put on him, his _true_ family.

Matt looked sad for him. He looked like his heart was breaking for Frank. No…that wasn’t his name. No, it _was_  his name but it also wasn’t.

“And you?” the blind man asked, reaching out to hold Frank’s hand. “Who are you?”

Frank squeezed his hand gently.

“I am Prometheus.”


	26. Chapter 26

Frank let go of his spear. It balanced perfectly vertical on its end, standing just where he left it.

He undid the ties on the back of his gown and took it off, shoving it into the trash can by the door. The closet was loaded with clothes, basic plain t-shirts and blue jeans and socks and underwear that all seemed to be in his size. He figured he had Stark to thank for that. Nice of him, Frank supposed. He dressed quickly.

And then-

Then _what?_

Really, what came next? What did he have left to do now? Break the curse, maybe. He _was_  still cursed, after all, and he remembered his first life, and most of the lives that came after, but he couldn’t quite remember the curse itself. He knew _who_  cursed him, but _the actual curse itself?_  And _why?_  Those were the only blank spots.

He sat down on the edge of his bed with a sigh.

Everything felt… It felt strange. _He_  felt strange. Everything just seemed so weird. He remembered being the Greek Titan Prometheus, but at the same time, he remembered all these _human_  lives. He remembered moving slowly through history, walking though life after life after life with no idea who he truly was; with so many questions and no answers in sight.

Someone knocked on his door. He contemplated not saying anything, pretending he wasn’t there. He really didn’t feel like talking to anyone at the moment. There was too much going on in his head to spare any thought to conversation.

“C’mon, Frank!” Matt said outside the door. “I know you’re in there, I can hear you. Just…say something? I won’t come in if you don’t want me to, but I just wanna know you’re okay. You can talk to me if you want to. Doctor Murdock’s psychiatric clinic is open for business?”

Frank took a deep breath.

“Come in.”

The door opened. Matt lingered outside for another moment, talking softly to someone else who was with him, then slipped into the room and shut the door behind him.

“Sorry. Amy’s really worried. Everyone else has a lot of questions too,” he explained. “But it can be just you and me for right now. Until you want someone else to join us. Or I can let them in now too. If…that’s what you’d like.”

Frank shook his head. No. No, he didn’t want to face all of them. Just facing Matt was hard enough.

“You can…sit down,” Frank said lowly. “If you want.”

Matt cleared his throat. He shuffled over to the bed. He sat down some distance away from Frank.

“I… I’m sorry,” he said. “I remember what I said this morning.”

The blind man swallowed. He nodded. “Yeah. That was…”

“I know,” Frank said. “What he said… I’m sorry, Matt. You never should’ve been forced to hear that. _I’m sorry.”_

Matt nodded again. “I know. I… I don’t blame you. Really, I don’t,” he promised. “It’s just…hearing all those things in _your_  voice, even if it wasn’t _you_  who said them. I guess that’s what hurt.”

“And I’m sorry you ever had to hear it from _anyone,_  my voice or not. _Especially_  in my voice, I guess,” he said lowly. “After…last night. And the thing in Italy.”

At that, Matt _snorted._  Which confused Frank a little. What was he laughing for?

“Sorry. Sorry, I just- The _thing_  in Italy?” he asked, turning his head to smile softly at Frank. “You mean the _thing_  where we jerked each other off?”

Yeah, that made Frank snort too. “Yeah. Yup, that’s the thing I’s talkin’ ‘bout.”

“You _do_  know you’re allowed to say _hand job,_  right?” Matt said. “I mean, it’s okay to talk about the dick you jerked off with the guy whom said dick is attached to.”

 _“Alright, alright,_  Murdock, chill out!” Frank said, nudging at Matt with his elbow, making the man laugh again. “Wanted to be, I dunno, _tactful?_  Didn’t wanna up and say somethin’ like _that time we shoved our hands down each other’s pants like a couple’a horny teens.”_

They both laughed for a few moments.

It felt _good._  Calming. Matt made him feel good. Made him feel calm.

Frank hazarded reaching his hand out. He took Matt’s hand in his, intertwining their fingers. Matt didn’t pull away, which Frank considered a victory.

“Hey. I’m sorry. For everything, really. Just…draggin’ you into all this mess. I know you said you wanted to help but I’m pretty sure you weren’t plannin’ on all’a _this,”_  he said, gesturing vaguely all around them to, well, _everything._  “And… _thank you._  Not sure I could’a gotten this far without you. Not sure I would’a stayed _sane_  through it without ya.”

Matt only smiled and squeezed Frank’s hand. “There’s really nothing to forgive, but…if it’s what you need to hear, then _I forgive you,”_  he said. _“But_  once all this mess is resolved, however _that’s_  gonna happen, you owe me one hell of a first date. _And_ I expect make up sex.”

The other man nodded. “Yeah. I think I can figure somethin’ out.”

*

Everyone sat around the table.

If there were conversations, they were kept subdued, voices softened.

Frank didn’t much like it. He didn’t like them walking on eggshells around him. They had done it all along, perhaps, but now it felt infinitely more pronounced. Like he could actually hear the faint sounds of shells cracking underfoot every time someone as much as looked at.

It was frustrating. It was all frustrating. He remembered everything; close to it, at least. He remembered everything _except_  the reason behind his curse. How it was done, why it was done, though he could guess his way to _whom_  it had been done by.

Zeus was always a miserable, vengeful little shit. The least favorite of his cousins, frankly. Though Achilles did compete for that title as well, that weak-ankled slut.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Matt said and sipped his coffee.

Frank shrugged. “Just thinkin’. My cousin did this to me,” he said. “It’s exactly the kinda twisted punishment he’d dish out if he thought it was deserved.”

Matt hummed. “Well, the _why_  is always a good start to figuring out the _how,_  right?” he said, hopeful as ever.

His hope was…endearing.

“Maybe. Zeus is a cunt, sure, but I can’t deny that he’s a clever one. His punishments were always of the _creative_  sort. I mean, already chained me to a mountain and had an eagle eat my guts out every day! Knowing him, this won’t be too different.”

“But you broke free from the mountain,” Amy said, sitting at his other side. “We’ll figure out a way outta this too. And I mean, there’s so many of us now! All these brains’re better than one, right?”

Frank tried to smile at her. “I hope so.”

He got out of his seat, leaving behind an unused plate and an empty cup. He needed to take a walk. Clear his head.

He left the dining room and walked the empty halls. He didn’t care where he went, he just kept walking.

Frank was tired.

That was the long and short of it, by then. He was just _so goddamn tired._  A few days ago, all that weighed on him was the loss of his wife and kids. But _now,_  it was the loss of a thousand wives, a thousand kids, and just as many mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, friends. And _God,_  it weighed. It weighed so much. Their names rested on his shoulders and he carried them with him, each one hurting just as much as the next. Thinking about them made him feel lonely. He had no one.

Well. No, that wasn’t strictly true.

He had Amy and Matt, Curt and Karen, the Liebermans.

But honestly, wasn’t that worse? Now he would just have to watch them grow old and die.

Of course, that was only if they managed to break the curse. If they didn’t… Well, then soon enough he wouldn’t remember any of this and he’d have new names to carry once he _did_  remember again.

He sat down on the terrace. He watched the still waters of the pool. He hoped no one followed him. He just needed to be alone for a minute. Just to get his head around all this.

Frank pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and held the phone to his ear.

“Curt,” the man answered after a few rings.

“Hey, it’s Frank.”

Curt let out a defeated sigh, then took a deep breath. “How hurt are you? What kinda trouble are ya in?”

It honestly made Frank chuckle. “I’m not hurt. No trouble,” he promised.

Curt scoffed at him. “Somehow, I doubt that. Call it _learning from experience.”_

“No, I just…”

Frank let out a heavy breath. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, rubbing at his eyes.

“I just needed to talk, I guess.”

“Oh. Well, how ‘bout you come by my place? Grab a beer?”

“Nah, I’m upstate. Is phone okay?”

“Sure, man. What’s up?”

Frank sighed again. “Where the hell to begin, Curt? Where the hell to begin?” he muttered. “I…feel alone. Feels like all I do is lose people, y’know?”

God, he didn’t have the energy left to explain _everything_  that was going on. The whole _he’s the Greek titan Prometheus and he was cursed by his cousin Zeus_  thing didn’t really seem like something Curt would believe even if Frank tried to explain it. Curt had a lot of faith and trust in Frank, but Frank was pretty sure even _Curt_  would start to doubt if Frank started talking about being an ancient immortal god.

“I’m tired, man. Tired as all hell. I-… Don’t wanna _die_  or nothin’, I just…wanna take a break from existin’. Stop thinkin’ for a while. Stop…everythin’. For a lil’ while.”

“You want me to call em like I see ‘em, or you want it sugarcoated?” Curt asked.

Frank snorted. “Tell it like it is.”

“I feel like that too sometimes. It’s…overwhelming. _Existing_  is overwhelming. The world’s _huge_  and we’re so small and everythin’ seems to move at a million miles an hour and you can’t keep up. It’s okay to feel like that. It think everyone feels like that at some point. But the way to deal with it? Take a moment, sit down, take a breath, think about everyone you can depend on. You? You got me, Karen, Amy, those Liebermans, Madani. I’m sure there’s a few more out there, but just remember _them._  Talk to them. Root yourself in the moment. The world is so huge, but _stop caring about the world!_  Just care about _your_  world. New York. The friends you’ve got here. That’s your world. That’s all you need to care about. Nothing else.”

Frank closed his eyes. He tried to take Curt’s advice.

_Deep breaths. Root yourself in the moment._

He tried to just breathe for a while. Focus on nothing. Just this moment, and nothing else.

Curt didn’t say anything. He probably knew what Frank was trying to do, and let him.

“Thanks, Curt.”

“No problem, man. Come by the group when you’re back in the city. Or my place. Talk some more. Just grab a beer, y’know?”

Frank smiled. “Sounds like a plan. Dunno when I’ll be back, though. Things are pretty…complicated right now. No trouble, just…complicated. My head’s just fuckin’ _spinnin’,_  y’know?”

Curt chuckled. “I know the feelin’, man,” he said. “But you can call me whenever you need to, man. Or drop by group, or my place.”

“Thanks, Curt. You’re a good guy.”

“So are you, Frank.”

Frank ended the call.

Curt was right. Frank couldn’t worry about the whole world. All he could worry about, was what was happening around him _right now._

He got up and headed back inside.

They needed to figure out how this curse was put on him, and how to break it. Everything else came second. This was the top priority at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing is hard, yall


	27. Chapter 27

“Friday! Globe hologram,” Frank said curtly as he stormed into the open space of the living room.

“Got it!” the AI responded happily.

In no time, the hologram appeared before him, a miniaturized version of the planet spinning lazily. He grabbed the image, making it float an inch, or so, off the flat of his palm. His eyes scanned over it. With a hand pulling on either side of the globe, the image expanded and allowed him to see each detail a little more clearly.

“What are you doing?” Matt asked.

Frank didn’t turn away from the globe but could hear the scrape of chair-legs on the floor as Matt got up.

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” Frank replied, talking more to himself than anyone else. “It’s the first thing we learned as children! The first story my father _ever_  told me! It was all I ever dreamed of as a kid!”

Another chair scraped. Both Matt and Amy appeared around him, at either his side. He continued to watch the hologram.

 _“What_  are you talking about, asshole?” Amy asked, elbowing him in the side.

“An island.”

 _“Okay,”_  Matt said hesitantly. “And which island exactly would that be?”

“The secret one.”

He could almost _feel_  Matt and Amy exchange a look behind his back (however the hell a blind guy could even _exchange a look)._

But Frank didn’t have time to think about that. Namely, because he had found what he was looking for.

The oceans on the hologram globe were a clear, luminous blue; islands becoming like dots of green and black floating on the surface. In his mind, he could overlay his fathers old maps onto this image and see the one island was missing. Where the island was on Iapetus’ maps, there was only clear blue ocean in the hologram.

He only had to go there. This could be it, this could be the answer to everything. He might find the way to break his curse, _on this island._

“I’m leaving,” Frank said. “I have to go there.”

He tossed the globe away as he turned on his toes and started walking again. He needed to pack his things and get moving. People were hurrying to follow him, incurable curiosity taking them over.

 _“Frank!_  What’s happening?” Matt asked, speaking for the group as he seemed to do where Frank was concerned. “Let us help!”

“You can’t help,” Frank told them all, not slowing for a moment. “The hidden island is called _Themiscyra,_  and on Themiscyra, there’s a city, and in the city live the Amazons, and the Amazons protect a library, and in the library is stored all the tapestries of life woven by the Fates, containing the complete history of all life that has ever been and ever will be and all the knowledge there has ever been and ever will be.”

As he spoke, he came into his room and snatched up his duffle bag. There wasn’t much packing to do. He only placed all his envelopes, and all they entailed, into the bag then put on his jacket and grabbed his spear.

Everyone stood on his doorstep.

 _“Zeus’_  tapestry is in there too, just like everyone elses. Find the tapestry, follow it, _watch the very moment where he cursed me._  If I see how he did it, I can figure out how to undo it.”

He tried to push through the crowd, but found himself stopped by a tight grip on his arm. When he turned to see who was holding him back, he was met with the red eyes of Matt’s spectacles looking at him.

“At least let me come with you,” he pleaded. “Going alone isn’t a good idea, and you know it. You don’t have to do this on your own.”

“You’re a fighter, I know. You can help, _I know._  But you’re still just a man. These are creatures made by Gods with little purpose but to _kill._  To them, killing you is as easy as breathing. I-…”

Frank could swear he choked on his breath for a moment. He couldn’t help himself from reaching his hand up, caressing Matt’s soft cheek.

“I still have to take you on that date. That’d be kinda hard to do if you’re dead.”

A smile inched onto Matt’s face. _“But you’ll be there to protect me.”_

“But that just means that if you die, it’ll be my fault.”

“But _I_  chose to go with you. It’s _my_  fault.”

“And I _let you_  come with.”

“Are we gonna stand here and argue blame for something that hasn’t even happened,” Matt countered dryly. “-or are we gonna go to Themiscyra?”

Frank’s eyes fell closed, as he took a deep breath.

“Fine. But you gotta do _everything_  I tell you. If I say run, you _run._  If I say hide, you _hide._  Got it?” he said and dared to open his eyes to look at Matt again.

Matt just nodded. “Got it. I will.”

Frank didn’t care about Amy and all the Avengers watching, he didn’t care what they would think; he only cared that Matt had given his word. He captured Matt’s soft lips in a gentle kiss, as if to seal a vow. It was only a short thing. A moment or two, but not much more.

As they parted, Matt smiled.

“Grab your things. Meet me on the terrace,” Frank told him.

“Got it!” Matt said again.

He pushed through the crowd and ran to his own room. Frank followed in the wake he had made, but continued on past Matt’s room. He walked as fast as he could. There was no time to waste.

 _“I’m coming too!”_  Amy decided.

She ran to catch up to Frank, then fell into even step with him.

“No, you’re not,” Frank said plainly. “I’ve lost enough of my children, Amy. I won’t lose you too.”

The girl appeared to be caught off guard by that, stopped dead in her tracks.

Matt was perfectly on time; as Frank came to the terrace, Matt came bolting into the living room, through it, and onto the terrace with Frank.

"You won't be able to track us," Frank told the others as he raised his spear.

The gilded eagle's head under the pike fell into dust, which floated away as if caught by a breeze. Out of the golden mist, Aetos came, spreading his wings and letting out an almighty screech. He hit the ground, skipping for a moment, talons ripping up the grass, wings flapping, as if uprepared for having been summoned. Still, he gathered himself quickly, shaking his body for a moment to straighten out his riffled feathers.

"Themiscyra's hidden by magic. Not even Strange could get there with a slingring, the shields are too strong. He'd get pulverized," Frank continued to the Avengers. "So just...sit pretty and we'll be back soon."

Before they could reply, he had begun the jog to meet Aetos and Matt had followed. The eagle lowered his wing for them and Frank made the climb with ease. Matt took the hand Frank offered, allowing himself to be helped up to sit astride Aetos’ back. As they got into place, Frank placed his duffle onto Matt’s back, which allowed Matt to shuffle closer and wrap his arms around Frank. He held on tight; Frank could feel the man’s heart pound against his back, racing at the prospect of _flying._

“Don’t worry,” Frank said over his shoulder, gripping onto Aetos’ feathers with his free hand and clinging to his spear with the other. “I won’t let you fall.”

“I know,” Matt said softly. “Still scary, though.”

Frank had to chuckle. “Hold on tight.”

He kicked his heels and shouted at Aetos. The eagle spread his enormous wings, and in a moment, they were in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're getting closer and closer to the end!!!!!


End file.
